Regina jail escapee says he never planned to break free

One of the six men who escaped from a Regina prison last month said he never planned the jailbreak, but once he realized it was happening, he decided to "jump on the bandwagon."

Daniel Wolfe, interviewed by CBC News at a Winnipeg jail, said he spotted a hole in a brick wall at the Regina Correctional Centre. He said he had no idea who made it, but by the time he noticed it, others had already crawled through it and escaped.

He decided he'd do the same.

"I have no idea who put it there, who made it there," he said Thursday at the Winnipeg Remand Centre.

"People were gone all of a sudden, I would look back and everyone was gone, so I said, like, what the hell is going on here? I jumped on the bandwagon and went, too."

Wolfe, 32, was arrested Wednesday night at a gas station in  Winnipeg. He was the fifth escapee to be caught since the Aug. 24 jailbreak, and now only Ryan John Agecoutay, 25, remains at large.

Hitchhiked to Manitoba

Wolfe said after he escaped, he hitchhiked to The Pas area in central Manitoba, where his family lives.

"I relaxed and tried to visit family members," Wolfe said. "Just said hello to everybody. You know, 'I'm doing all right, I'm OK'."

He said he did not get to visit either of his two children.

Wolfe said he did go to an apartment building in the nearby Opaskwayak Cree Nation, but he was gone long before the RCMP surrounded the building after getting a tip he was there.

Wolfe said he fled the prison in part because of the way he and other inmates were being treated, saying he was never allowed access to an elder or to perform traditional ceremonies despite the large number of native inmates there.

He suggested that medical services were also lacking, and that the guards often directed racist remarks at inmates.

"It was more than just wanting to get out of that place," he said.

"There's more issues to that place than that, you know, it was the way they treated us mostly, in that place. I mean, like, for human rights kind of thing."

He described being locked up for 23 hours at a time, despite the fact that he had never been involved in any major incident there.  

"You're there locked up, you're there for a reason but still, you don't need to be treated like an animal."

Wolfe is charged with two counts of first-degree murder and three counts of attempted murder in a violent home invasion in Fort Qu'Appelle, Sask., in 2007. He is known to have ties with the Indian Posse street gang.

The four other escapees who were caught are: Preston Clarence Buffalocalf, 22, Cody Dillon Keenatch, 19, James Joseph Pewean, 25, and Kenneth Lee Iron, 23. Iron was captured almost immediately after the jailbreak.

The province of Saskatchewan has set up a contact line to gather information on the escape. Callers will not be required to identify themselves.

The phone number is 1-866-999-4644 and will operate until Sept. 26.