Three escaped prisoners killed in SFM

SAN FRANCISCO DE MACORIS. Three inmates who escaped from the Vista al Valle Correctional Facility in San Francisco de Macoris on Sunday, died yesterday during an alleged gun battle with police agents in the La Gina sector of the city.

The dead are Jery Antonio Lopez, Marcos Noel Brito and Jeffrey Sandoval. The police found Kevlar vests, two 9 mm pistols, and several cell phones. Brito and Sandoval were serving 15 year sentences for the death of the Ureña brothers.

The spokesman for the Northeast Command of the National Police, Colonel Antonio Perez Calvo, reported that the deceased shot at police agents who were searching for them, forcing the patrol to return the fire.

The inmates were traveling in a pickup truck together with two women and a man with whom they had supposedly spent the night in a motel in the city.

The deceased belonged to a group of six inmates that escaped from the prison grounds on Sunday morning. Two men are still unaccounted for.

During the escape, the inmate Victor Alfonso Vasquez (El Guachi), who was serving a 30 year sentence for the murder of the university student Lohara Tavarez Rosario, was killed.