Forger escapes
women’s prison
A Pohakupu neighbor has a brief
encounter with the inmate
When her dogs started barking yesterday morning, Pohakupu resident Judy Barrett discovered a young woman in her back yard and mistook her for a teenager, possibly from nearby Kailua High School.
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"I thought to myself, 'Wait a minute, I don't think I have a mango tree,'" said Barrett. "She had a white sweat shirt, blue pants. ... Of course, now I know that's the prison uniform."
Officials at the Women's Community Correctional Center said they believe 31-year-old inmate Daphne Capol scaled the facility's 6-foot chain-link fence sometime between 9 and 10:45 a.m. yesterday and dropped herself into Barrett's yard, one of the many Pohakupu homes that border the prison.
Prior to her escape, Capol had been a part of a landscaping class holding its first meeting of the semester at 9 a.m.
Sometime during the class, prison officials said, Capol made a 100-yard dash up a hill, across a field and over the fence to freedom.
"She's going to be caught, that's obvious," said Warden Francis Sequeira. "Where is she going to on an island?"
He also added that Capol, who was serving time for theft and forgery, chose to escape even though she was up for a parole hearing next month.
"Maybe they're not ready for the parole release," he said. "We can only guess at that."
Landscaping classes have been suspended indefinitely until prison officials can assess whether they can hold them again safely, said Sequeira.
Capol is described as 5 feet tall, weighing 115 pounds, with brown eyes and black hair. She was last seen wearing blue prison pants and a gray sweat shirt with a red T-shirt underneath. Police also believe Capol may have had someone waiting with a car near Ulupii Street, where she jumped the fence.
Anyone with information about Capol's whereabouts is asked to call 911.