Murphy – A federal prisoner being held for a string of bank robberies across five North Carolina counties allegedly attempted to escape from the Cherokee County Detention Facility on Sunday afternoon, but was quickly recaptured.
Kelvin Wayne Simmons, 47, of Concord, was back in jail after being treated for severe lacerations and a broken bone. He is being held for the U.S. Marshal’s Office in Asheville for a long list of federal crimes, including bank robbery and kidnapping.
At 4:41 p.m. Sunday, Simmons escaped from the Cherokee County Detention Center inmate yard by scaling a fence topped with razor wire and falling to the ground outside the fence. He was surrounded only minutes later about 200 yards away by detention center officers, sheriff’s deputies and police officers from Murphy and Andrews, Sheriff Dustin Smith said in a release.
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Simmons was returned to custody and hospitalized for injuries caused by the razor wire and fall.
“He was cut up bad,” Sheriff Dustin Smith said. “The fence done what it was designed to do.”
Simmons is charged with felony escaping a local jail and misdemeanor resisting a public officer. The incident is being reviewed and investigated by the Cherokee County Sheriff’s Office.
Simmons was arrested on June 1, 2023, in Buncombe County following a robbery at First Citizens Bank in Hendersonville. He allegedly led police on high-speed chase after he was spotted in the Black Mountain area before crashing his vehicle on Interstate 240 in Asheville.
According to published reports, Simmons attempted to carjack an elderly woman’s car but was detained by three off-duty military service members. He was hospitalized following that capture.
Before his escape attempt Sunday, he was facing charges of bank robbery by force of violence, first-degree kidnapping, common law robbery, assault on a female, felony possession of cocaine and flee/elude arrest with a motor vehicle.
Bail at that time was set at $800,000. He is now being held without bail.
Simmons was with other inmates in his pod in the inmate yard for an outdoor recreation period. Inmate recreation and exposure to natural light are required by law.
The Cherokee County Detention Center began operations in summer 2008, replacing a jail in downtown Murphy built in 1922 designed to hold a maximum of 43 inmates.
The detention center has 150 inmate beds, including separate medical, juvenile, female and male pods. The facility is designed to handle the inmates with indirect supervision and laid out with seven separate dorms, including one 10-inmate maximum security dorm.
The facility was designed to expand in the future to house an additional 100 inmates being a total 350 bed facility. The facility houses inmates from Cherokee and surrounding counties as well as federal inmates.
Sunday’s incident was the first escape of its kind at the facility.