Inmate on loose since ’11 captured
ST. FRANCISVILLE — A state inmate who escaped from the West Feliciana Parish Jail in January 2011 was captured Saturday night after an initial arrest and another escape in Los Angeles, Sheriff J. Austin Daniel said.
David St. Germain, 47, fled to St. Tammany Parish after he broke out of the West Feliciana Parish Jail by climbing through a hole in a fence and then stealing a vehicle in Zachary, deputies said at the time.
St. Germain was the subject of an intense manhunt in the Slidell area, but he managed to elude authorities and travel to California where he was living under a false name.
Jail Warden Randy Holden said after St. Germain was arrested last week in Los Angeles in connection with a battery
on a homeless man, the fugitive escaped from a private mental health facility where he had been placed for an evaluation.
The U.S. Marshals Service tracked St. Germain through his cellphone and captured him Saturday night after a two-hour standoff in which the fugitive had to be subdued with a stun gun, Holden said.
Daniel said Monday in disclosing St. Germain’s capture that the fugitive was wanted by his office, the Calcasieu Parish Sheriff’s Office and state probation and parole agents.
The three agencies are expected to use a private prisoner transport company to return St. Germain to Calcasieu Parish if he agrees to waive formal extradition proceedings.
At the time of his escape in St. Francisville, St. Germain had been in a work release program, but the Department of Corrections pulled him from the program after he was accused of burglarizing his place of employment, Daniel said in 2011.