By Bill Miller
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, March 14, 1999; Page B1

A convicted killer knotted several bedsheets together and swung himself out an eighth-floor window of a D.C. jail facility early yesterday. But the sheets unraveled and suddenly gave way, plunging inmate Donnell Reed to a sidewalk below.

Reed's body wasn't discovered by jail guards or officials. Instead, officials said, he died, of trauma suffered in the fall, at Howard University Hospital, miles from the jail, after being dropped off there by an unidentified woman. She apparently had managed to spirit Reed away from the jail grounds unnoticed.

Officials with the Corrections Corporation of America, the private company that runs the 820-inmate Correctional Treatment Facility in Southeast Washington, were struggling late yesterday to determine how Reed managed his dramatic escape.

Not only had he braided the sheets together and rolled to the window in his wheelchair without being detected, he also apparently had hacked away the metal bars covering the window without being noticed, officials acknowledged.

"We all were taken aback," said Gloria Cannon Lloyd, a CCA spokeswoman. "He thought he was Spiderman or something."

Reed, 25, was serving a sentence of 57 years to life for first-degree murder and other charges. Requiring use of a wheelchair after a fight with another inmate at the Lorton Correctional Complex, Reed went to the Correctional Treatment Facility last summer for medical reasons, officials said.

Although escapes have been a persistent problem in recent years at the District's halfway houses, they rarely take place at the more secure jail facilities. Several prisoners freed themselves from shackles at the D.C. jail in August but gave up trying to scale a wall when D.C. corrections officers opened fire. The inmates weren't hit but were cut by the barbed wire.

The Correctional Treatment Facility is next to the main jail in the 1900 block of E Street SE, but, unlike the main jail, has neither a wall nor a fence surrounding it. Reed was the first person to break out since CCA took over operations of the building three years ago, Lloyd and others said.

"There will be a full investigation," Lloyd said, adding that it has not been determined whether other prisoners assisted Reed during the incident. Police said they believe Reed's death was an accident.

Reed and other inmates spent Saturday night in a television room, watching the NCAA basketball tournament, officials said. He was still in the TV room when a guard checked on him at 12:20 a.m., they said. But 15 minutes later, guards were drawn back to the room because they felt a brisk draft. That was when they found the bars hacked away, the glass smashed but no sign of anyone. Reed's wheelchair was parked beside the window, officials said.

The sheets were found, surrounded by broken glass and splotches of blood, on the ground below. D.C. police and CCA guards searched the area, but Reed was gone. They then locked all prisoners in their rooms and took a count to confirm that Reed was the only prisoner missing. In addition, they urged area hospitals to notify them if anyone showed up with injuries from a fall.

They found out later that Reed had been taken across the city to Howard University Hospital, where he was pronounced dead at 1:41 a.m. – more than an hour after he was reported missing from the correctional facility, which is adjacent to D.C. General Hospital.

After dropping Reed off, the woman vanished, authorities said. Police were trying to locate her yesterday to determine whether she was involved in the escape. Authorities said they wanted to find out why it took her an hour to get Reed medical attention.

Reed had been in the D.C. prison system since 1993, after his murder conviction in D.C. Superior Court. The court's offices were closed yesterday, and details about the murder case were not available. Lloyd said she had little information about the incident that put Reed in a wheelchair, except that authorities believed his mobility was severely limited. She said he was among D.C. prisoners who had been moved in recent years to a facility in Ohio that is run by her company. He was brought back to Washington last summer after Ohio officials complained about the number of dangerous offenders being sent to the state.

Reed is not the first prisoner using a wheelchair to catch authorities by surprise. Harold J. Cunningham Jr., who, like Reed, was jailed at the Correctional Treatment Facility, jumped out of his wheelchair and stabbed a government witness during his July 1996 murder trial. Cunningham managed to hide a knife inside his wheelchair, authorities said. The witness recovered, and Cunningham was convicted and sentenced to a life prison term.