Suicide Pact May Have Led To Death In The Tulsa County Jail

TULSA, Okla. (AP) -- The Tulsa County Sheriff's Office says a man who escaped from a prison and went on a crime spree before being recaptured has committed suicide in jail.<br/><br/>The sheriff's

Thursday, January 25th 2007, 9:57 am

By: News On 6

TULSA, Okla. (AP) -- The Tulsa County Sheriff's Office says a man who escaped from a prison and went on a crime spree before being recaptured has committed suicide in jail.

The sheriff's office says 23-year-old Tony Ellison was found hanging from a bedsheet tied to a light fixture inside his Tulsa County jail cell about 8:35 Thursday morning, 20 minutes after a routine check of his cell.

Undersheriff Brian Edwards says it appeared Ellison made a suicide pact with Charles McDaniels, the other man who escaped Monday with Ellison from the Great Plains Correctional Center in Hinton.

The two men are accused of going on a crime spree before being captured early yesterday in Tulsa.

McDaniels was immediately placed on an around-the-clock suicide watch.

Edwards says Ellison did not seem despondent and was not on a suicide watch.

This is the third suicide in the 18 months since the county took over operations of the jail from a private company.

Court records show Ellison was serving 15 years for unauthorized use of a motor vehicle and a consecutive five-year term for escaping from the Lincoln County jail in September 2005.

McDaniels was serving life in prison with the possibility of parole out of Tulsa County for shooting a cab driver during a robbery in Tulsa.