The Texas Department of Criminal Justice on Thursday released its report on the factors that led to a convict’s escape in May, allowing him to murder five members of a suburban Houston family. The state confirmed reporting by the Houston Chronicle and The Marshall Project that 45 percent of guard positions at the prison where Gonzalo Lopez was held were unfilled but said staffing shortages “are not an excuse for the multitude of security lapses that occurred in preparing Lopez for transport.” Instead, a “combination of several inadequate strip searches, failure to search property, poorly applied restraints, and other security shortcuts” contributed to the escape. “The fact is that if one of these actions was followed in compliance with existing policy,” the report noted, “it is likely that the escape could have been prevented.”
