Law enforcement officials are investigating why an escape from a privately run county jail went unreported until one of the four fugitives, injured jumping from the jail roof, showed up at a hospital a few hours later.
Two of the inmates, including one charged with murder, were still on the run Saturday morning.
''We in law enforcement are totally disgusted, and it's disheartening,'' said McKinley County Sheriff's Deputy Ron Williams.
''There obviously was human error,'' said jail warden Cody Graham, who runs the facility for Management Training Corp., a private jail operator under contract with McKinley County.
Has anyone ever reflected on the craziness of a creating a system that has an incentive to build more prisons for profit, and then an incentive to run them as cheaply as possible?