A South Carolina inmate broke out of a maximum-security prison using wire cutters apparently flown in by drone, officials said Friday, describing a new and hard-to-stop means of escape.

The convicted kidnapper Jimmy Causey, 46, was recaptured at a Texas motel before daybreak, more than two days after bolting to freedom in a plot worthy of a Hollywood script. It was the second time in 12 years that he had escaped.

This time, he used a smuggled-in cellphone to coordinate the delivery of the breakout tools, investigators said. Then, with dusk approaching on the Fourth of July, he cut through four fences and left a dummy in his bed that fooled his guards. He got an 18-hour head start.

When he was caught, he had about $47,000 in cash, an ID card and two guns on him, authorities said.

“We believe a drone was used to fly in the tools that allowed him to escape,” the South Carolina corrections director, Bryan Stirling, said. He said investigators were still trying to confirm that, and he didn’t elaborate on why they believed a drone was involved.

Officials are in the process of extraditing Causey to South Carolina, where he will be sent to one of the prison system’s most secure facilities. Authorities are still investigating exactly what happened leading up to and following the escape.

Stirling wouldn’t say if staff errors contributed to Causey’s escape, but he told reporters Friday that one officer would have been on duty in the area near Causey’s cell around when he got out. Later Friday, corrections officials told the Associated Press one employee at the prison, Lieber correctional institution, had been fired in connection with Causey’s escape.

Jimmy Causey. Photograph: AP

In 2005, Causey also used a dummy to escape, this one made from toilet paper to trick officers into thinking he was asleep in his bunk at a different South Carolina prison. He and another inmate hid in a garbage truck that was leaving the maximum-security institution. They were arrested three days later after a woman delivering pizza to a motel called the police.

The use of drones has increased as a way to deliver contraband such as drugs and cellphones to prisons across the US, including two recent cases in South Carolina. In May, two men were arrested for trying to fly knives, marijuana and phones into a medium-security state prison. Another man is serving a 15-year sentence after officials found a crashed drone outside a maximum-security institution in 2014.

Kevin Tamez, a 30-year law enforcement veteran who consults on prison security as managing partner of the New Jersey-based MPM Group, said he wasn’t aware of any other US prison escapes aided by drones.

Stirling said the state was spending millions to install netting at prisons to prevent people from throwing things over, but confessed that wouldn’t stop drones.

“Now they’re going to fly over the nets,” he said. “So what do we do next?”

To Stirling, it’s contraband cellphones that represent the biggest security threat, both inside and out of the prison. Last month, six correctional officers were rescued after an attempted confiscation of an inmate’s cellphone prompted a fight at a different prison in South Carolina.

In 2010, a veteran South Carolina correctional officer survived being shot six times at his home after officials say an inmate planned the shooting and used an illegal cellphone to coordinate with the shooter.

Stirling, who for years has spoken out about the dangers posed by inmates’ access to illegal cellphones behind bars, has asked the Federal Communications Commission for permission to jam cell signals at South Carolina prisons. The FCC chairman, Ajit Pai, has said he’s sympathetic to the problem, but the FCC has previously said its hands are tied by a decades-old law that says the agency can grant permission to jam the public airwaves only to federal agencies, not state or local ones. Any change is opposed by the cellphone industry, out of concern it could lead to wider gaps in their networks.

Frustrated that Causey’s escape is yet another security problem involving smuggled cellphones, Stirling urged the public to call their representatives in Congress and demand a solution such as the ability to jam signals at prison.

“It is senseless to me that the federal government continues to prohibit state officials and state prisons from blocking cellphones,” he said. “It needs to be fixed now. It needs to be fixed yesterday.”