Manhunt underway for violent Texas inmate ‘mistakenly’ released from same jail that wrongly freed capital murder suspect 6 months ago
A violent offender was “mistakenly” released from a Texas jail on Sunday — just six months after the same lockup wrongly freed a capital murder suspect due to a clerical error.
Troy Dugas, 36, is now the subject of a massive manhunt after he was accidentally allowed to walk free from Harris County Jail in Houston around 4:30 a.m. due to what authorities believe were mislabeled documents, according to the Houston County Sheriff’s Office.
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Deputies said the jailbird was set to begin a five-year prison term for assaulting a family member in Fort Bend County, along with a two-year sentence for evading arrest in Brazoria County.
Dugas had been locked up in the Houston facility since Aug. 14 on other unspecified local charges that have since been dismissed.
“A thorough investigation will be conducted to determine the circumstances that led to Dugas’ erroneous release from jail,” the sheriff’s office said in a press release Monday.
“Preliminary indications are that jail staff did not properly document his state prison sentence on his file, leading to the mistaken assumption that Dugas was eligible for release once his Harris County charges were dismissed.”
The sheriff’s office urged anyone who spots Dugas — described as a 215-pound black man who stands just over 6 feet tall with a tattoo on his neck — to contact authorities immediately.
The blunder unfolded months after jail staff improperly freed Justin Tompkins, 21, from the Harris County facility on Feb. 20, when they confused him with another inmate who shared the same name.
A search was launched as soon as the jail realized its screw-up — even though the prisoner warned them his release was a mistake before walking free, his lawyer told The Houston Chronicle at the time.
“He was telling him before he was even checked out that this was a mistake,” his attorney, Spence Graham, told the outlet.
“I think that the citizens of Harris County might be surprised that somebody would do that.”
Tompkins, who was arrested and charged in December 2022 for fatally shooting another man during a drug-fueled robbery, voluntarily returned to the jail about 24 hours later, deputies said.
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