Sumter Sheriff Dennis: Murder suspect Stinnette masterminded escape from jail Thursday night

After about an 8-hour manhunt overnight, Sumter County Sheriff’s Office deputies captured murder suspect Stephen Stinnette about 4 a.m. about one mile from the sheriff’s office detention center, from which he had escaped Thursday night.

Sumter County Sheriff Anthony Dennis provided details to the media this morning on what he initially described as a planned escape, masterminded by the 32-year-old Stinnette.

After an inmate set fire to his mattress in his cell a little after 7 p.m. Thursday within the jail’s high-security pod, all the pod’s 60 inmates had to evacuated from their cells into the open bay area. Then about 30 inmates initiated a planned riot with correctional officers, allowing the opportunity for Stinnette and two other inmates to exit outside into a fenced-in recreational area, the sheriff said.

With the assistance of several sheriff’s deputies, the riot was stopped with only minimal injuries to a couple detention center officers.

However, Stinnette used his shirt to assist him to climb over the outside barbed-wire fence to escape, sustaining several surface wounds in the process, Dennis said. He then proceeded to run into a wooded area near the jail.

Officers caught the two other inmates as they were also trying to escape. One was at the top of the 10-foot fence when captured by officers, another was standing at the base of the fence.

A Sumter resident, Stinnette was one of four individuals arrested May 4, 2018, after Jerry Lamars Johnson, 31, of Pioneer Drive in Sumter, was found dead in Lake Marion in April 2018. The sheriff's office said Johnson was shot multiple times in a wooded area of Sumter County and his body was buried twice here locally before being transported to Lake Marion in Orangeburg County. Last year, Dennis said, the suspects moved the body because they thought someone had revealed where Johnson was buried.

In the manhunt during the night, the sheriff’s office secured a perimeter within a two-mile radius of the jail where it thought Stinnette was located, he said.

The manhunt included more than 30 sheriff’s deputies, Dennis said, and a total of 50 to 60 officers including officials from the Sumter Police Department, Lee County Sheriff’s Office, the State Law Enforcement Division and others. Two K-9 units were involved in the search process and a SLED aviation unit.