United States: the hunt intensifies to find the escaped criminal, “armed and dangerous”

According to the police officer, the owner shot the fugitive, without injuring him, when he managed to escape.

Sentenced in mid-August to life in prison for stabbing his former girlfriend to death, “Cavalcante is considered armed and extremely dangerous,” he warned, specifying that the rifle was equipped with “a telescope and a lamp.

“You are facing someone who is desperate”: manhunt and schools closed in the northeast of the United States after the escape of a criminal

As the hunt intensifies, residents have once again been called upon to close the doors of their homes and vehicles, and “stay inside” their homes, in this large, rural and wooded suburb of Philadelphia. Like last week, several local schools are closed on Tuesday.

“Manhunt”

“Our farm is being flown over by helicopters, and there are a lot of police forces. It’s really a manhunt, there are (police officers) walking through the property, through the woods,” described by telephone to AFP Becki Patterson, manager of Lundale Farm, a neighboring agricultural operation.

The farm covers more than 220 hectares, and “there are trees, streams, bridges, all kinds of corners to squeeze through. So it’s really stressful,” she adds, judging that the “police are doing an incredible job” in difficult terrain.

Nearly two weeks after the escape of the Brazilian criminal, the time is getting longer and longer for the police, who have positioned hundreds of agents on the ground, supported by helicopters, drones and search dogs.

Cavalcante was spotted several times on video surveillance cameras, but each time he was able to escape from the search perimeters set up by the Pennsylvania police, supported by the FBI and US Marshals, specialized in tracking fugitives.

Wanted in Brazil

On Sunday, new photos were released, dating back to the previous night, where the fugitive appears clean-shaven, presumably to change his appearance after the publication of a wanted notice in which he had a black beard.

Cavalcante also managed to steal a white van, found abandoned on Sunday, probably because he was low on gas.

According to police, he sought help from two acquaintances, who notified the authorities. His sister, illegally present in the United States, was arrested.

The Brazilian, a small man of approximately 1.52 m and 54 kg according to a wanted poster, managed to escape on August 31 from the Chester County prison, a forty minute drive south of the current one. search area.

The escape, video of which was recorded by a prison camera and released by authorities, was as spectacular as it was embarrassing for prison officials.

In the extract, we see the prisoner, white t-shirt, blue pants and white sneakers, hiding in a recess of the exercise yard, then climbing agilely, spider-man style, his body horizontally between two walls , and disappear onto the roof.

The inmate was sentenced on August 22 to life in prison for stabbing his former girlfriend to death, in front of the victim’s child, during an argument in April 2021.

According to the police, he is also wanted for a murder committed in Brazil, which is why he fled his native country, first to Puerto Rico, where he obtained false papers, then to the northeast of the United States. United States, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer newspaper, which followed his trial.