Inmate Escapes in Chopper That Crashes

An inmate at a center for sex offenders made a Hollywood-style escape Monday in a helicopter that landed on the grounds and whisked him away before crashing in an orange grove nearby.

The helicopter, with a student pilot at the controls, cleared a 15-foot razor-wire fence surrounding the Martin Treatment Center, then went down about 100 yards away, authorities said.

The inmate, Steven Whitsett, 28, and the pilot ran off.

Police and prison guards from the Martin Correctional Institution next to the center searched the area with helicopters and dogs. They also searched trucks along a highway nearby.

Two gun holsters were found beside the helicopter, said Jenell Atlas, spokeswoman for the Martin County Sheriff’s Office.

“We do consider them armed and dangerous, and frankly, desperate,” she said.

The pilot was Clifford Sebastian Berkhart, 23, according to Beach Scott of the National Transportation Safety Board in Atlanta.

Whitsett had been convicted in 1994 of child molestation and finished his prison sentence in 1999. He was being held at the treatment center while awaiting a civil trial under a law aimed at keeping dangerous sexual offenders locked up even after they finish their prison sentences.

The breakout took place about 1 p.m. EDT. Berkhart had taken off in a training helicopter from a Fort Lauderdale airport. He had been in flight training for two months, Scott said, and this was only his second solo flight. He did not yet have an FAA license.

“It is out of a Hollywood script, isn’t it?,” Atlas said. “He landed in broad daylight, and he [the inmate] ran out like in a movie, but unlike in a movie, they crashed.”

The treatment center is about 35 miles northwest of West Palm Beach. Guards at the treatment center are not armed. But guards at the prison nearby have weapons and are responsible for security at the treatment center.

Orange groves, swamps and woods surround the center.

“They’re not prepared to stay out here like we are,” Atlas said of the inmate and the pilot. “They likely don’t have food or water and come nightfall, the bugs will carry them off.”

In 1989, a drug kingpin tried to escape the Dade County Metropolitan Correctional Center by helicopter but also crashed.

In December, two women hijacked a helicopter at gunpoint and ordered the pilot to fly to a maximum-security prison in northern Florida to break out an inmate on death row. They abandoned the plan after flying within sight of the prison.