4th person charged in ambush that helped Idaho prison inmate escape from Boise hospital

A fourth person has been charged in connection with an ambush that allowed a white supremacist gang member to escape an Idaho prison as he was being released from a Boise hospital.

Tia J. Garcia, 27, of Twin Falls, owned the car in which inmate Skylar Meade and his accomplice, Nicholas Umphenour, fled after Umphenour shot and wounded two corrections officers who were preparing to return Meade to prison in early March bring, Shawn. Kelley, of the Ada County Prosecutor’s Office, told a judge Thursday.

She falsely reported that the car had been stolen less than an hour after the ambush, Kelley said, and text messages from the day before showed that Umphenour had instructed her to do so.

Police tracked down Meade and Umphenour about 36 hours after their escape, but the pair are also suspected of murdering two men while on the run. They have not been charged with the murders.

Here’s what you need to know about the case.

WHO WAS THE LAST PERSON ARRESTED?

Garcia is known to Umphenour and Meade, Kelley said, and she picked Umphenour up at the airport when he arrived in Boise on March 17. It is not clear where Umphenour had traveled from, but prosecutors have said he recently spent time in Florida and planned to return there. Umphenour and Garcia were seen on surveillance video from various places in Boise that day.

Garcia lives with her sister and is unemployed, according to a public defender who represented her during an initial court appearance Thursday. Her criminal record includes six felonies and four misdemeanors, including battery and drug charges, as well as fleeing and eluding.

She is being held on $1 million bail on charges of aiding and abetting escape. She has not entered a plea. The Ada County Public Defender’s Office, which represents Meade, Umphenour and Garcia, declined to comment Thursday.

HOW WAS THE ESCAPE PLANNED?

Authorities are still investigating how exactly the ambush was planned and executed. Idaho Department of Correction officials have said Meade and Umphenour were both members of the Aryan Knights white supremacist prison gang, which federal prosecutors have described as a “scourge” within the state’s prison system.

Meade, 31, served 20 years in prison for shooting a sheriff’s sergeant during a chase. Umphenour was released in January from the same prison — the Idaho Maximum Security Institution in Kuna, south of Boise — after serving a prison sentence on robbery and weapons convictions.

The two were sometimes housed together and had mutual friends in and out of prison, officials said. Meade was recently held in solitary confinement because officials deemed him a security risk.

The attack on the corrections officers took place just after 2 a.m. on March 20 in the ambulance room of the Sint-Alphonsus Regional Medical Center. Meade had been taken to the hospital earlier that night because he had injured himself, officials said. Kelley told the court Thursday that Meade refused all treatment when he arrived at the hospital.

Two corrections officers were injured by Umphenour and a third by responding police who mistook the officer for the shooter. Everyone is expected to recover.

What happened after the ambush?

Idaho State Police say that while on the run, Umphenour and Meade apparently killed two men in northern Idaho: Gerald Don Henderson, the 72-year-old resident of a remote cabin near Orofino who killed Umphenour about ten years ago, when Umphenour was in his late teens and having problems at home; and James L. Mauney, 83, of Juliaetta, who was reported missing when he did not return from walking his dogs.

Investigators found shackles in Henderson’s cabin. Mauney’s minivan was located about seven hours south in Filer. While officers secured that area, Meade and Umphenour fled in separate cars but were apprehended, police said.

According to investigators, a woman identified as Tonia Huber was driving the truck Meade was in. She is charged with harboring a fugitive, evading police and drug possession. Huber’s attorney, Daniel Brown, said Thursday that his client “is presumed innocent and we continue to maintain that presumption.”

WHAT’S NEXT?

Meade, Umphenour and Garcia are scheduled to be arraigned April 8 before Ada County Magistrate Judge Abraham Wingrove. Huber, who is charged in Twin Falls County, faces a preliminary hearing on April 5.

Corrections Director Josh Tewalt has promised to review his policies and practices in light of the escape. The attack came amid a wave of gun violence in hospitals and medical centers, which are struggling to adapt to growing threats.

“We are using all available resources to try to understand exactly how they were going to plan it,” Tewalt said last week.

___

Johnson reported from Seattle, Thiessen from Anchorage, Alaska.