Idaho white supremacist inmate, accomplice in custody

Police on Thursday arrested two white supremacist gang members — an Idaho prison inmate and the accomplice who helped him escape — following an attack on corrections officers at a Boise hospital, and investigators are looking into whether they killed two people while on the run.

Skylar Meade, the escaped inmate, and Nicholas Umphenour, the man who police say shot two Idaho corrections officers early Wednesday to break Meade out of custody, were arrested after a brief car chase Thursday afternoon in Twin Falls, about 130 miles (209 kilometers) from the hospital.

Authorities said during a news conference Thursday that they were investigating two homicides, in Clearwater County and Nez Perce County, which borders Washington state. Both victims were men. Police found shackles at the scene of one of the killings and “that’s one of the ways we tied them together,” Idaho State Police Lt. Colonel Sheldon Kelley said.

The Clearwater County Sheriff’s Office said via Facebook that it received a request for a welfare check Wednesday evening and deputies found a man who had died. The suspects were several hours out of the county when the call came in, according to the office. No further details were released.

Meade, 31, was sentenced to 20 years in prison in 2017 for shooting at a sheriff’s sergeant during a high-speed chase. Umphenour was released from the same prison — the Idaho Maximum Security Institution in Kuna, south of Boise — in January. The two had at times been housed together, were both members of the Aryan Knights prison gang, and had mutual friends in and out of prison, officials said.

No shots were fired during the arrest, police said.

Saint Alphonsus Regional Medical Center in Boise, Idaho, is shown on Wednesday, March 20, 2024. (Sarah A. Miller/Idaho Statesman via AP)

The attack on the Idaho Department of Correction officers came just after 2 a.m. Wednesday in the ambulance bay of Saint Alphonsus Regional Medical Center, as they were preparing to return Meade to the prison. He had been brought to the hospital earlier in the night because he injured himself, officials said.

After the ambush, one officer shot by Umphenour was in critical but stable condition,