Police escapee recaptured

This story was updated with additional information on Oct. 24

A man who escaped from the Grambling Police Department shortly after 4 p.m. Tuesday has been recaptured and is now being held in the Lincoln Parish Detention Center.

Delano Owens, 30, was apprehended at approximate-ly 9 a. m. Wednesday in the vicinity of Edgewood Drive and East California Avenue in Ruston, Grambling Police Chief Tommy Clark, Jr., said.

Owens, who was handcuffed and shackled when he escaped, spent the night on the lam hiding between Ruston and Grambling before catching a ride from an unsuspecting resident of a Ruston apartment complex on Kennon Lane to the location where he was eventually recaptured.

Earlier Wednesday, Owens engaged in an almost five-hour standoff with police and Lincoln Parish sheriff’s deputies while he holed up in his exgirlfriend’s residence in Grambling.

Clark said the standoff ended after LPSO’s special response team fired gas into to the house. Owens was found hiding in the attic naked and under some insulation, Clark said.

The series of incidents that led to Owens’ initial arrest apparently began Monday night when he went to his former girlfriend’s workplace in West Monroe and got inside her vehicle around 3:30 a.m., police said.

When the woman got off work, Owens reportedly raped her. The two then reportedly went to the woman’s residence.

On Tuesday morning, the woman’s supervisor called GPD requesting a welfare check on the woman when she didn’t arrive at work. When officers arrived at the apartment on Martin Luther King Avenue, they discovered Owens inside with the victim.

The woman was later freed, but the standoff continued. Owens was arrested after sheriff’s deputies found him in the rafters. He was taken to the police station on West Martin Luther King Avenue.

That’s where he slipped out the back door.

Local and state law enforcement agencies “did an extensive search until dark,” Clark said. “Then he hunkered down.”

Owens apparently walked to Kennon Lane, about 3 miles from the GPD, and began knocking on doors Wednesday morning. Owens was still handcuffed and shackled but was reportedly wearing baggy clothes and was able to hide the restraints.

“When they caught him, he had them concealed,” Clark said.

A Kennon Lane resident, who didn’t know Owens or the circumstances, gave Owens a ride to the area where he was later discovered, authorities said.

Owens supposedly lives on White Street in Ruston, and at one point police thought he might have been trying to get there.

Owens is charged with false imprisonment, resisting an officer, unauthorized entry of an inhabited dwelling, second-degree battery of a dating partner with strangulation, simple escape, theft, violation of a protective order, and resisting an officer by foot.

Owens was also wanted by the Ouachita Parish Sheriff’s Office for two counts of second-degree kidnapping, second-degree rape, stalking, and aggravated battery.

Owens was arrested Oct. 18 on charges of unauthorized entry of an inhabited dwelling and a simple theft, stemming from another incident with his ex-girlfriend where allegedly appeared in her bathroom while she was showering.

Police said Owens apparently copied a key to unlock the victim’s apartment door.