A two-boys escaping from a Newport News jail with a wall dug up: New charges are pending and the duo is back in custody

Two inmates who escaped from a Newport News, Virginia, jail by digging out and scaling a wall were found at a nearby IHOP hours later Tuesday, officials said.

The Newport News sheriff’s office says new charges are pending against the two men and that they are back in custody.

The sheriff’s office shared a photo of a small hole in one of the jail’s brick walls that they said had been dug by the men to scale the security wall.

I’m thankful for the citizens who watched and notified law enforcement when they saw the duo at the IHOP. It reinforces what we always say, according to Sheriff Gabriel Morgan in the news release.

The sheriff’s office said they have a team of officers and city facility engineers reviewing the incident and how to “mitigate the aforementioned facility weakness.”

He was in jail for contempt of court, parole violation, and failure to appear. Nemo had been in custody since October on charges including credit card fraud, forgery, possession of burglary tools, grand larceny and contempt of court.

The two had been held at Newport News Jail Annex, a medium-security facility, for months facing a slew of different charges, according to the sheriff’s office.

The Newport News Jail Facility Escape: NNSO Steve Drew says the men in the escape didn’t end there, but they did end quickly

In a Tuesday Facebook Live video, Newport News Police Chief Steve Drew said he did not think there were any threats to the public after their arrest.

“I don’t think that we were dealing with, like, menacing individuals,” Drew said. Two people escaped from the jail facility.

Authorities say the men escaped on Monday afternoon, though their absence was first noticed during a routine headcount around 7:15 p.m. As it turned out, they didn’t stay in their cell, but anywhere in the facility.

The Newport News facility management and engineering team, comprised of NNSO personnel and city facilities engineers, are reviewing and formulating ways to mitigate the facility weakness.

Authorities appealed to the public to be on lookout for two men wearing white thermal sweat suits as they fled the scene of the escape.

Drew attributed that to robust collaboration between local law enforcement agencies as well as calls from community members, who, he said, “played a huge role in allowing this thing to come to an end quickly.”