ST. LOUIS COUNTY, Mo. – A convicted inmate who walked out of Mercy South Hospital last month, prompting a brief manhunt in the St. Louis area before his capture, is facing new charges in connection with the escape.
The St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office charged Tommy Boyd on Monday with escape from the Department of Corrections, unlawful possession of a firearm, and two counts of stealing. He’s being held on a $500,000 cash-only bond.
Boyd, 45, was serving a decades-long sentence at the Potosi Correctional Center for statutory sodomy. He’d been taken to Mercy South Hospital for an undisclosed treatment on Sept. 20. Boyd walked out of the main entrance at the hospital shortly before 4 a.m. on Sept. 21.
Boyd was taken back into custody just before 8 p.m. that same day in the Dierbergs parking lot on Old Route 66 (Watson Road) in Shrewsbury. He was wearing a corrections officer’s jacket and had the key to his handcuffs on him at the time of his arrest.
The correctional officers assigned to guard Boyd were fired days later. In a statement, the Missouri Department of Corrections said “departmental protocol was not followed” but did not specify how Boyd was able to escape.
Missouri court records show Boyd has convictions in two cases, initially investigated in 1996 and 2007.
A jury convicted Boyd of enticement of a child in November 2007, and he was sentenced to 30 years in prison over that charge. Court records linked both of his cases to Greene County, Missouri, in the Springfield metropolitan area.
