Inmate flees prison in Charleston

CHARLESTON – Police were searching Tuesday for a Charleston Correctional Institute inmate from Auburn who apparently escaped on foot from the minimum-security facility.

Stanley Wetmore, 39, fled shortly before 10 p.m. Monday, but was not reported missing until 11:20 p.m., the state Department of Corrections said.

He was sent to the facility Dec. 1, 1998, after being sentenced in Androscoggin County Superior Court on one count of aggravated assault and in 8th District Court in Lewiston on one count each of aggravated assault and burglary.

Wetmore was scheduled for release Dec. 7, 2005.

“We’ve had some fairly exhaustive efforts all night,” Chief Administrative Officer Stephen Berry said Tuesday.

Crews and dogs from Maine State Police, the Maine Warden Service, sheriff’s departments in Penobscot and Piscataquis counties and the Dover-Foxcroft Police Department were searching.

Wetmore’s family has been contacted and Berry said members said they were surprised at the news. “And quite frankly, so were we,” he added. The facility has had no recent problems with Wetmore regarding security violations, Berry said.

The Charleston facility is classified as minimum security, Berry said. About 90 adult males are housed there and it has no locks on the doors, bars on the windows or fences surrounding the building.

The last escape was in August 2003 when inmate Sidney Dunton walked away from a work crew at the National Folk Festival in Bangor.

Wetmore, who escaped from his room, faces up to five additional years in the facility for escaping, Berry said. Officials said they have no leads on Wetmore’s whereabouts.

Anyone with information is asked to call the facility at 285-0800.