ST. LOUIS — A nearly 16-hour manhunt ended just before 8 p.m. Thursday for a Missouri Department of Corrections prisoner who escaped from custody at a south St. Louis County hospital.
Tommy Wayne Boyd has been incarcerated at the Potosi Correctional Facility serving a 30-year sentence for "enticement of a child," according to court records.
The I-Team found that is not his first conviction for a sex crime involving a child.
All of his offenses and convictions took place in Greene County, Missouri.
He is considered a Tier III offender — the highest level, which requires a life time registration requirement and reports every 90 days to a corrections law enforcement officer.
Tier III offenders are also not eligible to file a petition for removal from the sex offender registry, unless the requirement to register results from an adjudicated delinquent juvenile adjudication, after 25 years, and the clean record removal is met.
It's like he will soon face more charges — and time behind bars — stemming from his escape.
Multiple law enforcement sources familiar with the investigation and Boyd's arrest told 5 On Your Side he bragged about how he escaped while he was being processed Thursday night at the St. Louis County Justice Center in Clayton.
Boyd was arrested earlier in the evening outside a Shrewsbury grocery store.
He said he was being watched by two guards. One went to the bathroom and the other fell asleep. He said he lifted the key off of the sleeping guard, uncuffed himself, stole the guard's jacket and walked out of the hospital, according to the sources.
St. Louis County police then released a photo of him taken with a woman in the south St. Louis area a few hours later.
Moments before his arrest, law enforcement sources say he got into a dispute with a woman at her house in Shrewsbury, so she called 911 when he walked out of her house and trailed him from her vehicle at a distance to tell police where to find him.
His hair was almost completely shaved at the time of his arrest.
Here's what we know about Boyd:
Tommy Wayne Boyd
Age: 45
Height: 5'9"
Weight: 160 pounds
Description: Boyd is balding with a beard. He has blue eyes with a scar on his right eye. He has a chest tattoo and tattoos on his upper arms.
Clothing: Boyd was wearing a black sweatshirt, black jacket and orange slippers when he escaped.
Previous convictions
Boyd served a 10-year sentence from February 1997 to November 2006 for statutory sodomy. The crime occurred in Greene County, Missouri in 1996 and involved an 11-year-old child, according to court documents.
Current sentence
Just months after his release in 2006, Boyd was arrested and charged with enticement of a child. That means he was trying to engage a child younger than 14 in a sex act with him while he was older than 21.
Boyd was sentenced to 30 years in prison for that offence in 2007, and has been at the Potosi Correctional Facility.
Click here for the latest in the search for Boyd.
This incident is still under investigation, so anyone with information regarding the incident is asked to contact St. Louis County police at 636-529-8210 to speak with investigators.
To remain anonymous, contact CrimeStoppers at 1-866-371-TIPS (8477).
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