A cross-country trip transporting prisoners turned wild when two of them stole the van which had a total of eight prison inmates. But it was a phone call from one of their own that landed the prisoners back behind bars.
Joshua Silverman, a prisoner, along with five other inmates watched as the two prisoners stole the van after it stopped at a hospital in Weatherford on Tuesday.
Michael Coleman and Lester Burns worked together to steal that van, police said. They escaped while two guards were inside the hospital with another prisoner.
"Uh, yes, ma'am, you're probably not going to believe this, but I'm a prisoner in a van, and I'm here with a couple of these other cats," Silverman politely explained to the 911 operator.
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"A couple of the guys that were in the van jacked the van ... At the hospital," he said during the nearly four-minute audio clip that Weatherford police released yesterday.
"We're somewhere in Oklahoma," Silverman told the dispatcher. "We're back in some yard. I just don't want to get shot by cops or nothing."
Six of the inmates were quickly captured. Authorities summoned dogs and helicopters to search for the two inmates who had fled the scene.
The escaped prisoners prompted a massive manhunt that lasted nearly five hours.
The assistant police chief in Weatherford said that most of the prisoners are from California and Arizona.