Staff Reporter

A Perry County man and three other individuals have been charged in connection with last week's escape from the Kentucky River Regional Jail in Hazard.

The Hazard City Police Department received a call at approximately 2:30 p.m. Tuesday afternoon stating that a male inmate had escaped from the jail and to be on the lookout for a blue Chevrolet van.

Troopers with the Kentucky State Police found the van shortly after the call came out at the Whispering Pines Apartments located at Gorman Hollow. Officers with the Hazard Police Department, Perry County Sheriff's Office, and the Kentucky River Regional Jail quickly responded to the scene, launching an extensive search at the apartment complex for 28-year-old William Feltner, who was arrested the previous Saturday by Deputy Danny Miller and charged with the alleged armed robbery of the Texaco service station at Exit 56 just outside of Hazard.

Officers with the Hazard Police Department received information that Feltner was possibly at apartment 324 in Eastern Pines. Police said Feltner's sister, Mazzie Trent, allowed officers into the apartment to conduct a search, during which they say Feltner was located inside a closet underneath a blanket. Police say Feltner was initially non compliant, but was taken into custody and subsequently back to the regional jail.

Feltner was charged with felony second-degree escape and resisting arrest, while Trent and two other individuals were charged with second-degree complicity to escape, those individuals being William Feltner's wife, Elizabeth, and Porshia Patrick. Sgt. Isaac Whitaker with the Hazard Police Department said more charges could be filed pending the outcome of the investigation.

Whitaker noted that Feltner's quick apprehension was due to the different law enforcement agencies working together. Feltner was caught in Hazard approximately two hours after he escaped from the jail. "It was a good effort between different officers and different agencies," Whitaker said.

Kentucky River Regional Jail administrator Tim Kilburn said last week that Feltner was able to escape from the jail because of a door left open in the facility. "An employee had left the door open to the visitation room," Kilburn said. "And when [Feltner] came out of visitation instead of going left out of the cell he ran out of the door."

Kilburn said Feltner was able to flee the jai in the blue van after he was given a set of keys from the people who had come to visit him at the jail.

Feltner's escape was not the first from the Kentucky River Regional Jail. Randy Campbell, who was a trustee at the time of his incarceration in Hazard, escaped using ventilation ducts in October of last year. Campbell was later apprehended during a traffic stop in West Virginia and is currently serving a five year sentence at the La Grange state penitentiary.