Utah officials are trying to determine how a white supremacist inmate freed himself yesterday during a medical check-up, allegedly killed a corrections officer and led police on a high-speed, rush-hour chase across Salt Lake City, reports the Salt Lake Tribune. Police said inmate Curtis Michael Allgier was alone with Stephen Anderson at the University of Utah awaiting an MRI on his back about 7:45 a.m. Allgier shed his shackles, overpowered, and disarmed Anderson and shot him in the head before fleeing, police said.
Allgier was arrested about 55 minutes later at a restaurant 7 1/2 miles away after a high-speed chase and remains in jail facing a murder charge. Allgier, a heavily tattooed member of the Aryan Empire Warriors, had a history of incarceration and escape and, most recently, had a falling out with his white supremacist gang mates, officials said. He was being housed in a single cell in a Utah State Prison maximum security unit for his own safety.