Editor’s note: This story has been updated to clarify Umphenour’s and Meade’s alleged role in the escape.
BOISE, Idaho (NewsNation) — Authorities on Thursday captured an escaped inmate and an accomplice in a white supremacist gang who fled after the accomplice shot and wounded Idaho corrections officers as they were transporting the inmate from a Boise hospital, according to police.
Police said Skylar Meade and accomplice Nicholas Umphenour were captured around 2 p.m. near the Twin Falls area.
Police said Umphenour is suspected of shooting two corrections officers during Wednesday’s ambush in the ambulance bay at Saint Alphonsus Regional Medical Center.
The attack occurred at 2:15 a.m. as Idaho Department of Correction officers prepared to bring Meade back to prison. Department Director Josh Tewalt said during a news conference Wednesday afternoon that Meade was taken to the hospital at 9:35 p.m. Tuesday after he engaged in “self-injurious behavior” and medical staff determined he needed emergency care.
One officer shot by the suspect was in critical but stable condition, police said, while the second wounded officer had serious but non-life-threatening injuries. The third injured corrections officer also sustained non-life-threatening injuries when a responding officer — incorrectly believing the shooter was still in the emergency room and seeing an armed person near the entrance — opened fire.
“This brazen, violent, and apparently coordinated attack on Idaho Department of Corrections personnel, to facilitate an escape of a dangerous inmate, was carried out right in front of the Emergency Department, where people come for medical help, often in the direst circumstances,” Boise Police Chief Ron Winegar said in a written statement.
The Aryan Knights formed in the mid-1990s in Idaho’s prison system to organize criminal activity for a select group of white people in custody, as well as outside prison walls, according to the U.S. attorney’s office in the district of Idaho.
In 2021, a man described as a leader in the group was sentenced to life in prison for his role in a plot to traffic drugs behind bars and use violence to collect unpaid debts. In a court filing ahead of Harlan Hale’s sentencing, federal prosecutors described the Aryan Knights as a “scourge” within the state’s prison system that drains its resources.
“The hate-fueled gang engages in many types of criminal activity and casts shadows of intimidation, addiction, and violence over prison life,” prosecutors wrote.
In 2022, the Anti-Defamation League counted 75 different white supremacist prison gangs in federal or local facilities in at least 38 states. The ADL said two of the largest such groups, the Aryan Circle and Aryan Brotherhood of Texas, had at least 1,500 members.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.