Four days after accused killer Dayonte Resiles escaped from a Broward County courtroom with the help of a concealed handcuff key, another inmate was found with another handcuff key hidden in his waistband.
The latest security lapse came on the same day Broward County sheriff Scott Israel began enhanced scrutiny of maximum security inmates, mandating that detention deputies stay with the inmates until an armed deputy is present.
Tuesday morning, it was a detention deputy who left his handcuff key in a holding cell – he said it fell out of his shirt pocket as he bent over to unshackle a disabled inmate.
By the time he realized it was missing, the inmate who found and concealed it in his pants had been taken from the holding cell to a courtroom.
The key was missing for about 20 minutes, until after an inmate being strip-searched as part of a shake-down of the area told a deputy another inmate had concealed the key in his pants.
That inmate, accused child molester and burglar Keenan Renois, was located in a courtroom for a pretrial hearing.
Renois, 18, was moved to a holding cell and, after being questioned, reached inside his uniform pants, retrieved the handcuff key and gave it to another deputy, according to a sheriff’s report released Tuesday afternoon.
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The key was pulled from inside a hole in Renois’ waistband, the report stated.
Renois told a deputy he saw the key on the floor, picked it up and was going to throw it under the cell door, but did not know what deputies would think, so he held onto it.
He said he planned on leaving the key in his unit and was not going to do anything with it, the deputy wrote.
Possession of a concealed handcuff key is a felony in Florida. The sheriff would not answer whether Renois is going to be charged in connection with the incident.
Resiles escaped from the Broward County Courthouse on Friday after slipping out of his handcuffs while awaiting a hearing on whether he will face the death penalty in the 2014 stabbing death of Jill Halliburton Su during an attempted robbery at her home in Davie, Florida. Su's family founded the Halliburton oil services company.
Four people, including two juveniles, are charged with helping Resiles escape. He is still at large.
