By Juliana A. Torres

Staff Writer

The grandmother and father of Michael Jamal Rigby, a 21-year-old documented gang member charged with attempted murder, have been arrested for helping Rigby escape after breaking out of the Osceola County Jail Friday morning.

Though jail personnel didn’t note Rigby’s disappearance until 5:40 a.m., the Osceola County Sheriff’s Office investigations place Rigby in the Hunter’s Creek area with his father, Brian Rigby, at 2:30 a.m. Investigators believe he could have escaped from his maximum security cell as early as midnight.

“We have a pretty good idea as to everything that happened, what contributing factors were in place that allowed it to happen,” Osceola Corrections Department Chief Greg Futch said Tuesday. “If Mr. Rigby was in custody, then most everything would be out in the open.”

The morning of the escape, investigators were concentrating on the south side of the jail, and particularly around orange doors that allow the maintenance of the cells’ water and sewer plumbing and electricity from the outside.

“That gives maintenance access to making repairs so they don’t have to go inside the jail to do so,” Futch said, explaining the purpose of the doors located directly behind the cells.

Rigby also had to make it past two fences and was possibly injured in the process, Futch said.

“There was evidence to indicate that,” he said.

Blood was found on one of the fences, Sheriff’s Office spokeswoman Twis Lizasuain said. Investigators also found Rigby’s jail-issued uniform on jail property.

Rigby showed up at his grandmother’s home, less than a mile and half away from the jail, in just his boxers, according to Sheriff’s Office reports. The 79-year-old grandmother, Regenia Ralph, answered the door and asked Rigby what he was doing there, knowing he should be in jail, Lizasuain said.

According to the Sheriff’s Office investigation, she gave the escapee money, a change of clothes and food before she called her son, Brian Rigby. The father picked up his son and drove him to the home of Deloris Thomas, who said she has known the Rigby family for about 14 years. She also has worked at the Kissimmee-based business, Start to Finish Plus Auto Sales & Service, owned by Brian Rigby, for the past six years.

The Rigbys showed up at Thomas’ Hunter’s Creek apartment at 2:30 a.m. Brian Rigby tried to convince Thomas to take his son to Jacksonville, and when she refused, told her to give Michael Rigby her business cell phone. He asked her to come with him to pick up a vehicle to help his son escape.

They came back to the apartment with a red, four-door Mitsubishi Mirage, with black rims and tinted windows and possibly a Tennessee tag, number 4H15251.

“I gotta go. I have to keep moving,” Thomas remembered Michael Rigby saying.

Brian Rigby gave his son $20 for gas and Thomas’s cell phone and charger. He left around 3:45 a.m. that morning.

Both Brian Rigby and Ralph, the grandmother, were arrested Monday for their respective contributions in Michael Rigby’s escape.

Jail personnel noticed Rigby was gone as they were delivering breakfast to the inmates, Futch said. Sheriff’s Office deputies were called to the jail at 6:31 a.m., 51 minutes after the escape was discovered. Futch said there was a reason for the delay, but couldn’t “comment on anything specific right now.”

Sheriff’s Office search parties set a perimeter around the jail, but released it later in the morning without finding the escapee.

Thomas told investigators that when she saw Brian Rigby later that morning, at about 7:30 a.m., he told her that his son “should be in Jacksonville by now,” according to the father’s arrest affidavit.

Trouble at jail

Futch apologized to the community Tuesday for “this particular incident.”

“Obviously, it’s something that we never want to happen and, ultimately, I’m the one who takes full responsibility for it,” he said. “I do hope that, as a result of this, we haven’t lost the public’s trust.”

The Corrections Department is conducting its own investigation into the jailbreak and will be compiling a report to the Osceola County manager and board of commissioners, likely by the end of the week, Futch said.

“I’m very comfortable that the results of those investigations will be comprehensive and will enable us to work toward ensuring that we don’t have this type of escape occurring again,” he said.

The Sheriff’s Office was scheduled to debrief jail personnel after press time Wednesday afternoon.

The jail escape is the latest of several incidents that have put the department in hot water in the last year.

In November, the jail, due to a paperwork mix-up, prematurely released a man who was wanted for strangling and imprisoning a Kissimmee woman. In January of 2009, a corrections officer was accused of bribery and smuggling drugs into the jail.

Most notably, in June, a convicted felon obtained a gun and forced a corrections officer to exchange uniforms with him as he tried to escape. Though he was stopped, another corrections officer has been charged as a conspirator to his escape attempt.

While several security measures were enacted since the attempted escape, the jail is still working to upgrade infrastructure that was recommended in the resulting investigation, Futch said. That includes an X-ray machine that would scan the property of everyone, from attorneys and volunteers to employees, coming into the jail. The department obtained funding for the machine in October and is in the process of purchasing it, Futch said.

Also at issue in June was low staffing at the jail. However, the jail administrators recently hired 62 more employees, and they will hire another 30 by April 1. While there were some officers working overtime the morning of the escape, that did not factor directly into the problem, Futch said.

“At this point, I’m not sure I could use that as a primary factor in the escape,” he said.

Futch did say there were tools used in the escape.

“I’m not ready to tell you what tools were used, and how they were obtained. We know what they are,” he said.

Futch became director of the Corrections Department in August 2008. The administration of the Osceola County Jail is his fourth such role. However, in the past, he’s been brought in to fix major situations gone awry, he told the News-Gazette in 2008. Overcrowding in the jail and understaffing were the biggest problems at the Osceola County Jail when Futch came into the job.

“We’ve been struggling a little bit,” he said Tuesday.

Rigby’s history

The younger Rigby was involved in a Poinciana incident July 11 where his girlfriend tried to stab his ex-girlfriend with a fork and then shot her in the arm. Rigby shot at the vehicle the woman was riding in as she tried to escape from the Poinciana party, celebrating the birthday of Rigby’s girlfriend, Kayla Margarit Vazquez, who also was charged with attempted murder.

Rigby also is accused of later breaking into the home of one of the witnesses at the party, threatening the residents with harm if they talked about what happened.

He was arrested for the armed robbery of a CVS pharmacy in 2008, for which he was later convicted of attempted robbery. He also reportedly was involved in an invasion of a Poinciana home in 2007, where a resident was stabbed and another pistol-whipped.

Search continues

Investigators believe Rigby has left Florida. After leaving the state, Rigby likely met up with his out-of-state girlfriend.

“We do believe that the two are together and possibly in the Mitsubishi Mirage,” Lizasuain said.

The Sheriff’s Office’s search for Rigby is nationwide, Lizasuain said.

“We are aggressively working to apprehend a wanted dangerous criminal who, from previous arrests, has demonstrated that he is violent,” she said. “We’re asking the citizens to call us with any and all information they have about him.”

Rigby is a black male, about 5 feet 11 inches tall, weighing 170 pounds. Anyone with information is asked to call the Sheriff’s Office at 407-348-2222 or anonymously through Crimeline at 800-423-TIPS. Tips that lead to felony arrests are eligible for cash rewards up to $1,000.