A man awaiting trial on child-sex charges in the southern state of Arkansas in the United States tried to saw off his right leg in an apparent escape bid, police said on Monday.
Days before he was due to appear in court on charges of rape and engaging children in sexually explicit conduct, Jerry Scholes sawed down to the bone of his right calf, just above the point where he had been fitted with an electronic tracking anklet, Detective Sergeant Doroteo Delacruz said.
“The speculation is he was trying to escape,” Delacruz, who handled the case for the police department in the town of Malvern, said.
“If he had succeeded in cutting off the leg, he would not have set off the alarm on the monitoring device and he would have had 48 hours before anyone knew he had done it,” Delacruz said.
The suspect might also have maimed himself so that he would be deemed mentally unfit to stand trial, or so that he would be jailed in a special prison wing for the disabled, Delacruz said.
“He has not given an exact reason for why he did it, except maybe to his clergyman or doctor,” Delacruz said, adding that emergency medical staff found Scholes with “plastic zip ties on various parts of his body, including, I’m told, his penis.”
“He had already been given psychological testing and was deemed fit,” Delacruz said.
Scholes was sentenced on Friday to 50 years in jail. — AFP