19-year-old convicted murderer captured after escaping from Youth Detention Center

By Web staff

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    ALBUQUERQUE, New Mexico (KOAT) — The 19-year-old man who escaped from the Youth Detention Center on Saturday in Albuquerque is back in custody.

Josef Toney turned himself in at the detention center around 1 a.m. Sunday and was taken into custody, a spokesperson with the Bernalillo County Sheriff’s Office said.

According to the criminal complaint, Toney was in the patio area at the detention center when he pulled something out of his pocket, unlocked the gate and escaped. Sheriff John Allen said that while Albuquerque Police learned of the escape through a 911 call, no one told the Sheriff’s office about the escape until four hours later.

According to APD, the staff called 911 just before 5 p.m., which was routed to APD dispatch because of the location of the detention center. They also say APD did not physically respond to the center, but the call described as a missing person call, instead of an escape.

“One of the problems that we are seeing right away is protocol within staff. That is too long of a delay for us to make sure that we are able to get somebody back in custody who is a danger to the community,” Allen said.

Toney escaped from custody Saturday around 1:30 p.m. He was accused of killing Ariel Mallam and Jessica Lucero on Jan. 27, 2021.

In April, Toney reached a plea deal on that double murder charge, two counts of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, abandonment or abuse of a child and tampering of evidence.

Toney was scheduled to appear in court for a sentencing hearing on June 26. However, Sheriff Allen questions why he was kept in Youth Detention to begin with.

“This is a facility for people to be held here for 90 days. This individual has been here for two years. We need a different facility to separate 18- and 19-year-old people. If they do not choose to fix the children’s code and not separate them from the other residents that are of younger age from here, so this incident does not happen again,” Allen said.

Greg Perez, the deputy county manager, agrees.

“We really need to look at how do we get those individuals out once they’re convicted of their crime and they’re just awaiting sentencing, that can be up to six months that we’re waiting for that we need to get them somewhere else. If it’s MDC, if it’s another facility, whatever that is. But those are the individuals that are causing us the biggest problem within the four walls because they have no care anymore,” Perez said. “You have to remember that this facility was not intended to house 27 to 29 individuals convicted of some type of murder or homicide. Right now, we have 54 youth in this facility, 27 of which are in here for some form of murder or homicide.”

Perez said two employees have been put on administrative leave, which is protocol, until they are able to do an internal administrative investigation.

Toney has been booked at the Metropolitan Detention Center.

In addition to his previous charges, Toney faces a new charge of escape or attempt to escape from jail.

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