Chronically understaffed Texas prisons set stage for prison bus escape and massacre of family (Texas Tribune)

Chronically understaffed Texas prisons set stage for prison bus escape and massacre of family – By Jolie McCullough (Texas Tribune) / Dec 9, 2022

Investigative reviews by the Texas Department of Criminal Justice and independent consultants found the severely short-staffed prison routinely bypassed crucial security checks, leading to a convicted murderer’s escape.

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Seven months after Texas saw one of the nation’s deadliest prison escapes, investigations into what went wrong have come back to one factor: The state’s lockups are dangerously short-staffed.

On May 12, convicted murderer Gonzalo Lopez was on a prison transport bus in Central Texas when he managed to escape his handcuffs, cut into the driver’s compartment and stab the driver with a makeshift weapon. He stole the officer’s gun, wrestled him outside and hijacked the bus, driving about a mile before crashing and fleeing on foot.

Lopez evaded capture for weeks, until law enforcement responding to a welfare check at an area cabin on June 2 found Mark Collins and his four grandsons, ages 11 to 18, dead and the family’s truck missing. That night, deputies south of San Antonio spotted the truck and stopped Lopez with spike strips, ultimately killing him in a shootout.

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