Standoff Ends When Escapee Shoots Another

The last of five escaped Texas inmates were captured Monday after one of them shot the other in a standoff at a couple’s farmhouse, law enforcement authorities said.

Bob Harold Leach, one of the last two men on the run, freed the couple they were holding hostage, authorities said. Then he shot his fellow fugitive, Gerald Lynn Gantt, in the abdomen and surrendered. Gantt was hospitalized in good condition.

“It was a matter of one of the suspects wanting to come out and the other not, and a conflict between the two,” Dist. Atty. Tim Cole said. Leach “was very helpful in getting those people out, and we know it, and they know it.”

Irma Forrester, one of the hostages, said Leach allowed the couple to take their medicine and kept asking if they needed anything. While Gantt was asleep, Leach quietly led the couple into the bathroom, where they crawled out the window about 3 a.m., she said.

“Everybody’s got a little good in them,” she said.

Leach, 38, Gantt, 20, and three others broke out of the Grayson County Jail, about 60 miles north of Dallas, on Thursday. They jimmied the locks on their cell doors, crawled through the ventilation system and tunneled their way through a dirt floor in the basement, leaving behind wadded-up sheets and newspapers in their bunks.

The five men had been in jail on charges including assault, kidnapping and child rape.

Grayson County Sheriff Keith Gary said the men, muddy and in their underwear, went to an apartment near the jail where one inmate’s father, Gary Reynolds, let them use a shower and drove them about 30 miles south to McKinney. Reynolds has been arrested and faces charges of harboring fugitives.

The sheriff said the men had no plan to stick together after the breakout.

“I feel that Leach initially was the leader,” Gary said. “I’m not sure, but somewhere along the way he lost the leadership role to Gantt.”

Two of them were captured Friday in a horse stable. A third was caught Saturday night.

Leach and Gantt abducted the stable owner and fled in stolen pickup trucks, authorities said. The woman was later released unharmed. The pair then abducted another woman, who got away.

On Sunday night, Leach and Gantt, driving a stolen car, turned onto a dirt road and into the Forresters’ driveway, authorities said. The fugitives allegedly went inside and tied up Forrester, 63, and her 65-year-old husband, Vincent.

Authorities surrounded the farmhouse during the nine-hour standoff. Amid scattered gunfire from the house, Leach negotiated with officers by telephone.

Leach was not charged in the shooting of Gantt, who authorities said was holding a gun at the time.