Authorities are taking no chances with convicted killer Danelo Cavalcante, who is now being held at Pennsylvania’s most advanced and expensive prison.
Cavalcante woke up on Thursday inside the State Correctional Institution Phoenix, a maximum-security facility in Montgomery County, which once also housed the likes of disgraced funnyman Bill Cosby. Cavalcante is currently being kept in what officials described as a “specialized observation unit,” Patch reported.
Dubbed a “state-of-the-art facility” by Pennsylvania’s Department of Corrections, SCI Phoenix is significantly more notorious than the facility Cavalcante escaped from on Aug. 31. Surveillance video from that morning shows the 34-year-old former fugitive scaling a wall in the yard area of Chester County Prison and then up onto the roof — all the while going unnoticed by a guard in a watchtower.
Pennsylvania State Police via AP
Danelo Souza Cavalcante is taken into custody at the Pennsylvania State Police barracks at Avondale Pa., on Wednesday, Sept. 13, 2023.
For two weeks, Cavalcante eluded law enforcement officers by breaking into homes and taking food, stealing a delivery truck and even altering his appearance. He planned to make his way to Canada, but law enforcement got their big break in the case overnight Wednesday, when a plane fitted with a thermal imaging camera picked up his heat signal. They managed to track him to a wooded area and then surrounded him.
Even then, Cavalcante attempted to flee, prompting authorities to release a K9 named Yoda, who has been credited with subduing him.
From there, he was quickly arraigned at the Avondale barracks on an escape charge, and then shuttled to the supermax facility, where he will serve out a life sentence for murdering his girlfriend.
SCI Phoenix, Pennsylvania’s newest detention center, opened in 2018 as a replacement for State Correctional Institution Graterford, which was built in 1929. The 3,422-bed prison, which has significantly more space and modern security features, cost $400 million.
So far, no one has been able to break out of the pricey prison.
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