According to state prisons officials, a former Arkansas police commander serving lengthy sentences for rape and murder broke out of jail on Sunday.
After being detained since 2017, Grant Hardin, the former police chief of Gateway, a small town close to the Arkansas-Missouri border, escaped from the North Central Unit in Calico Rock. Details about his escape were not disclosed by corrections officials.
In collaboration with local, state, and federal law enforcement authorities, the Division of Correction and the Division of Community Correction are taking the lead.
In October 2017, Hardin entered a guilty plea to first-degree murder in relation to James Appleton’s shooting death at the age of 59.
On February 23, 2017, Appleton was shot in the head in Garfield as he was speaking to his brother-in-law, who was then Gateway Mayor Andrew Tillman, according to an affidavit submitted in the case.
Appleton worked for the Gateway water department. Appleton’s body was discovered by police inside a vehicle.
Hardin received a 30-year prison sentence after serving as Gateway’s police chief for around four months in early 2016.
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In addition, he is incarcerated for 50 years for the rape of an elementary school teacher in Rogers, north of Fayetteville, in 1997.
In his guilty plea in 2019, he stated that as the statute of limitations drew closer, investigators applied for a John Doe Warrant in 2003 using DNA samples taken from the crime scene.
When Hardin was imprisoned for killing Appleton, investigators found a match in the DNA when it was compared to both the old and new profiles.
