The last of 10 inmates who escaped from a New Orleans jail five months ago is now in the Fulton County Jail awaiting extradition after authorities tracked him 500 miles to a crawl space in a southwest Atlanta home.
In a Thursday morning court hearing livestreamed by WXIA-TV, Derrick Groves agreed to be taken back to Louisiana instead of challenging his extradition.
“I want to return where I’m from,” Groves said to the Fulton judge, his hands cuffed behind his back.
Groves was convicted of murder in 2024 but fled before he could be sentenced. He faces the possibility of life in prison without parole.
Although the U.S. Marshals Service did not reveal how they located Groves on Wednesday, they believe he “was definitely helped by a number of people throughout this whole ordeal,” fugitive investigator Frank Lempka said in an interview with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. No charges have been filed against those who helped him, and the investigation remains active.
The inmates made national headlines in May when they broke out of the Orleans Parish Jail through a hole in a cell wall behind a toilet, The Associated Press reported. Some escapees were captured the same day, while others remained on the run, according to news reports.
Groves was the last to evade law enforcement. The FBI offered a reward of $20,000 for any information leading to his arrest and warned the public he was expected to be “armed and dangerous.”
He was arrested Wednesday afternoon at a home on Honeysuckle Lane by U.S. marshals, Atlanta SWAT officers and Clayton County police, Lempka confirmed.
Credit: Ben Hendren
Credit: Ben Hendren
Lempka said the New Orleans office spent “thousands of hours” working the case.
On Tuesday, the New Orleans Marshals office requested assistance from the U.S. Marshals Southeast Regional Fugitive Task Force. They said they believed Groves had been in Atlanta for at least a couple of weeks, Lempka said.
Wednesday’s SWAT operation began around 10:30 a.m. Groves was taken into custody just after 2 p.m. and did not communicate with law enforcement until just before his capture.
“He’s a very, very dangerous individual,” Lempka said. “They took their time for their safety and his safety, and he was ultimately found hiding in the back of a crawl space in the basement.”
SWAT officers surrounded the home and deployed gas cannisters inside, Atlanta Deputy Chief Kelley Collier said in a news conference Wednesday afternoon. No one else was inside.
“A Clayton County K-9 was deployed in the crawl space of the location, and they found him in that crawl space,” Collier said.
Police found guns and drugs in the house, for which Groves could face additional charges alongside his aggravated escape charge out of Louisiana, Lempka said.
“Trying to hide in Atlanta was a poor choice for Groves,” Jim Joyner, the SERFTF commander, said in a statement. “The U.S. Marshals and state and local officers assigned to the Southeast Regional Fugitive Task Force are relentless at what they do. I pray that this arrest brings some sense of peace and closure to the family of his victim.”
Groves was convicted of murder last year after killing two people and injuring two others at a Mardi Gras celebration in 2018. A jury found him guilty of two counts of second-degree murder for the shooting deaths of Jamar Robinson and Byron Jackson, and two counts of attempted second-degree murder for the two people who were injured, according to the district attorney’s office.
Administrative delays, including a mistrial, had prevented his transfer to a more secure prison facility from the local jail, the outlet reported.
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