Missouri authorities are searching for an escaped inmate, accused of murdering his wife, after he slipped away when a sheriff’s deputy allowed him and a few other inmates out of their cells to watch 4th of July fireworks, according to KY3.

Jason McClurg, 32, of Winona, Missouri, was being held on charges of killing his wife with a “poisonous Kool-Aid concoction,” containing prescription medications. According to authorities, he made several attempts using the same method before his wife, Stephanie McClurg, 32, succumbed.

ADVERTISEMENT

According to Sheriff Steven Blunkall, a deputy allowed McClurg and nine other inmates watch the town’s 4th of July fireworks celebration from a cage outside the courthouse.

“The deputy said he had them in the cage and he started to put’em back up,” the sheriff explained. “He turned to lock the gate, I guess, or something, and one of the inmates took off to the east here.”

Blunkall says the deputy has been fired and that McClurg was the second inmate to have escaped from the Shannon County jail on the deputy’s watch.

“I really didn’t even want them out here”, says Blunkall. “He wasn’t supposed to have them out here at that hour.”

McClurg, who stand 6’1″, weighing 190 pounds, with blonde hair, brown eyes and several tattoos is considered dangerous and possibly armed.

ADVERTISEMENT

Sheriffs deputies have been tracking him the densely-packed brush surrounding the town, but tracking dogs lost his scent at a creek about an eighth of a mile away from the jail.

Authorities believe he is headed towards his home town of Winona.