More than a week after an inmate was mistakenly released from the Clark County jail, the sheriff’s office says there are no new developments in locating him.
Clark County Undersheriff Mike Cooke said Friday that deputies are still investigating the May 12 incident where convicted felon Michael Diontae Johnson reportedly swapped identities with another inmate scheduled to be released and walked out of the Clark County Jail.
Johnson remains on the loose, though investigators are not saying much about what they’re doing to catch him.
“We’re certainly not looking yard to yard, shed to shed for the guy,” Cooke said, though he would not elaborate further on what the search is like.
Johnson was serving a 24-year sentence for kidnapping and aggravated assault in Arizona and had been transferred to Clark County to stand trial in a domestic violence case. He is now additionally facing a charge of second-degree escape, court records show.
Johnson switched ID bracelets with fellow inmate 19-year-old LaQuon Carson Boggs of Portland, according to court documents filed in support of the new charges.
He put on Boggs’ clothes, signed Boggs’ name on the paperwork and recited Boggs’ birthdate before walking out the doors of the jail a free man at about 8:30 a.m. May 12, according to court records.
Jailers realized that Johnson was missing and that Boggs was still in custody about 12:45 p.m. during the lunch-hour head count, according to court documents. It’s unclear how Boggs got involved in the escape and how long the men had switched their identities, but Johnson assumed Boggs’ identity long enough to successfully escape, court records said.
Boggs was released later the same day in accordance with his previously scheduled release, Cooke said. Any future charges related to the escape will be brought against him following the investigation’s conclusion, he added.
This wasn’t Johnson’s first escape from custody. In 2008, he was imprisoned at the Olympic Corrections Center for less than a week on drug violations and firearms possession convictions when he was found to be missing from his living quarters.
In that escape, two people picked Johnson up and drove him to Vancouver, then apparently took a bus to Nevada. He was arrested days later at a bus station in Reno.
Johnson’s Clark County case stems from a domestic violence incident in March 2014 when he allegedly made threats and assaulted a woman, court records show.
He posted bail in that case, but then did not show up to court and was arrested later that year in Arizona for kidnapping and aggravated assault. He was convicted on those charges, according to court documents.
In the Clark County case, he is accused of bail jumping, two counts of harassment-death threats, intimidating a witness and fourth-degree assault, all domestic violence crimes. He is scheduled to go to trial in June.
Cooke said that the internal review of the mistaken release is ongoing.
“It’s important that we thoroughly understand how this happened,” Cooke said. “If there are areas that we could change to mitigate something like this happening again, we’re certainly going to do that, but we don’t want to prejudge what those things might be until our jail administration has done a thorough review.”
