04/17/2013 • 5 views
Inmate Allegedly Escapes by Mailing Himself Out of Jail
In April 2013, a prison inmate in Utah is reported to have escaped custody by hiding inside a large box and having it shipped out of the facility. Authorities later located and re-arrested the man; details and motives reported at the time remain limited.
After the box left the premises, authorities determined an escape had occurred and began searching for the man. Law enforcement subsequently located and re-arrested him within a short period, returning him to custody. Media accounts from the time indicated no serious injuries to staff or the inmate, and the escape did not lead to a prolonged manhunt.
Details reported in 2013 varied in specificity. Some local outlets described the facility as a county jail and noted the use of contractors or staff to move supplies and outgoing items, creating the opportunity for the concealment. Other reports emphasized the unusual method—mailing or concealing oneself in a box—as the most newsworthy element, while providing limited information about the inmate’s identity, original charges, or whether disciplinary or procedural changes followed the incident.
Publicly available sources from that period do not present a full official timeline of how the inmate gained access to the box, whether the packaging process had security protocols that failed, or the exact route the package took after leaving the detention center. It is also not clear from contemporary reporting whether the inmate had inside assistance, exploited a routine vulnerability, or acted alone.
Incidents of inmates attempting escapes using delivery containers are rare but not unprecedented; they typically prompt internal reviews of handling procedures for outgoing goods, visitor and vendor protocols, and staff training. In this Utah case, immediate re-apprehension limited public safety impacts, and subsequent reporting did not highlight broader escape attempts linked to the same facility.
Because reporting at the time was limited and local, some specifics—such as the inmate’s name, the jail’s internal security response, and any legal consequences beyond re-arrest—are either not widely documented in accessible national records or were not disclosed publicly. Where available, contemporaneous local news reports and official county statements are the basis for accounts of the incident.
This summary reflects the core, verifiable elements reported in April 2013: an inmate left custody by hiding in a box that was moved out of a county detention center in Utah, and authorities subsequently located and returned him to custody. Other operational details and motivations remain sparsely documented in public sources from the time.