Another inmate escapes Echo Glen, arrested two hours later outside facility

A 16-year-old inmate at Echo Glen’s Children Center who escaped Thursday night has been arrested by King County Sheriff’s Office deputies.

The teen — whose previous charges were not violent in nature — was said to have escaped just before 9 p.m. through a gap in a “fenced enclosure,” but was apprehended by law enforcement just over two hours later. No staff or residents were injured in the incident.

All five Echo Glen escapees in custody

This marks the second recent instance of an escape from the juvenile detention facility, after five inmates broke out in late January. In that incident, the five teenagers — who were all previously convicted for various felonies — had threatened staff with a knife before fleeing in a stolen vehicle. They were each later arrested and returned to the facility, with new felony charges filed against them by the King County Prosecutor’s Office.

Echo Glen employees have long raised concerns over staffing shortages, evidenced by a 2018 report conducted by the Hyzer Group for the Department of Social and Health Services and the Juvenile Rehabilitation Administration. It provided staffing analysis of juvenile rehabilitation centers across the state, including eight community facilities for incarcerated youths and three higher security residential facilities, including Snoqualmie’s Echo Glen.

Among the report’s key findings was that rehabilitation counselors, due to lack of staff, were forced to portion most of their time towards supervision and security tasks, unable to provide “core residential treatment” therapy. Cumulatively, it suggested that the bulk of the state’s juvenile rehabilitation facilities are chronically understaffed, and called on the state’s Legislature to appropriate additional funds to address the problem.

MyNorthwest reporter Dalton Day contributed to this story

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