Escapee Killed, Another Hurt in Gun Battle

NEEDLES —  An escapee from an Arizona prison farm was killed and another was critically wounded during a gun battle that erupted when they were confronted by San Bernardino County sheriff’s deputies at a crowded McDonald’s restaurant in Needles. One deputy was wounded.

None of an estimated 20 customers were injured during the noontime shooting.

Deputies Jon Jones and Gale Duffy were sent to the restaurant after an employee there recognized the two escapees from a newspaper report, San Bernardino County sheriff’s spokesman Sgt. Mike Stodelle said.

Jones, 31, was shot twice when he confronted the two inmates inside the restaurant.

The suspects then ran for a side door, where they encountered Duffy, 40, who ordered them to halt and drop their guns, Stodelle said. When one suspect turned and began shooting, the spokesman said, Duffy fired twice and wounded both men. Duffy was not hit.

Serious Condition

Jones, who has been with the Sheriff’s Department about four years, was in serious but stable condition at Lake Havasu Hospital, Lake Havasu City, Ariz., with two gunshot wounds in his abdomen.

Both escapees were taken by helicopter to a Las Vegas hospital.

Glen Dale Bowen, 25, who authorities said escaped from the Mohave County Honor Farm at Kingman, Ariz., was in critical condition at Southern Nevada Memorial Hospital, with a bullet wound in his lower abdomen, a hospital spokesman said.

The second escapee, Gregory Chipman Rawson, 20, was pronounced dead on arrival at the hospital. He had been shot in the chest, the spokesman said.

Bowen and Rawson escaped from the honor farm at about 3:40 a.m. Monday, Lt. Clark Morrell, a spokesman for the Mohave County Sheriff’s Department, said in Kingman.

Two Guards Injured

Morrell said that one jailer was struck over the head with “an iron bar or a hammer” and that another was “choked out.”

The escapees fled in a station wagon belonging to one of the jailers and took two .357-Magnum handguns and several rounds of ammunition that had been stored in a safe, Morrell said.

Morrell said that Rawson had been serving time on burglary and theft convictions and that Bowen was there on a drunk-driving conviction.

Needles, situated on the Colorado River at the California-Arizona border, is about 210 miles northeast of downtown Los Angeles and about 60 miles west of Kingman.