An inmate convicted for murder was accidentally released by prison officials. Police has since put up a man hunt for the convict.
A convicted killer was accidentally released from prison in Louisiana last week and remains at large. No one even noticed that 32-year-old Benjueil Johnson wasn't supposed to be released until a passerby who knew he was incarcerated recognized him on the street Monday and called the Iberville Sheriff's Office to ask why he was free as a manhunt is now underway for him and a warrant has been issued for his arrest.
Johnson was in the middle of serving a 40-year sentence pleaded guilty to manslaughter in the fatal shooting of 31-year-old Cordies Gale. He was accidentally released from the Dixon Correctional Institute on Sept. 23 because of a technical glitch.
Johnson was already serving time on unrelated charges when he was convicted of manslaughter. The plan was for him to simply continue serving the 40-year sentence at Dixon, but that information was never communicated to the state prison.
"Whenever he was convicted [in Iberville] in 2013, that information never came to us. So, last week, when he finished an early release program he was involved with related to his previous charges, we started the release process," spokeswoman Pam Laborde said Tuesday.
She went on to say that the mistake should have been caught, adding that the employee responsible will be disciplined.
"On the rap sheet, there was information on there that should have prompted the records staff at DCI who was working on his case to at least call Iberville and say, 'Hey I see something on it, I'm not sure what's going on, I don't have any paperwork on a conviction, but there may be something here, can you tell me what it's about?' "
Johnson's mother was initially thrilled by his early release. "We're thinking, this is a gift from God, that he got out early," Francel Johnson told the news station. But when she learned it was a mistake, her joy quickly turned to fear for her son. Now she's scared that he will be killed when he's found. "It's not his fault, it's not his fault. He got released," Johnson said. "You told him he was no longer your property, he bonded out, and now you're hunting him like a dog, like he escaped."
Source: People.com