Cops: Kitchen Worker Helped NC Inmate Escape

Another prison worker has aided another escape, police say, but this prison break didn't last as long as the one in upstate NY: NC inmate Kristopher Antonio McNeil was discovered missing early Saturday and was recaptured late last night, NBC News reports. Prison kitchen worker Kendra Lynette Miller, 33, has been charged with multiple offenses: having sex with an inmate, providing an electronic device to an inmate, aiding and abetting a fugitive, and harboring a fugitive. Investigators believe McNeil, a 29-year-old serving time for second-degree murder, scaled a fence to get out of the Brown Creek Correctional Institution.

Officials say Miller started working as a food service officer at the Polkton, NC facility in December, WNCN reports. Police say they recaptured McNeil after he was spotted walking along a road around 80 miles away from the prison by people who recognized him from news reports and called police, the AP reports. McNeil was scheduled for release in 2018 but the escape charges could now add a few more years to his sentence, the AP notes. Miller, meanwhile, is being held on $500,000 bond, and the state's prisons director says he will "support prosecution to the fullest extent of the law," NBC reports. (More North Carolina stories.)