CLALLAM BAY — An inmate serving 45 years for first-degree murder at Clallam Bay Corrections Center was shot to death by a guard as he tried to escape on a forklift while a cohort held a guard hostage Wednesday morning.
Kevin Newland, 25, was shot when he drove a forklift through the doors of the work area and into the perimeter fences, Department of Corrections spokesman Chad Lewis said.
Another correctional officer fired one shot at Newland, killing him, Lewis said.
State prison officials said Wednesday night that Newland and a second inmate plotted the escape plan.
The other inmate, Dominick Maldonado, 25 — who is serving a 163-year sentence on 15 charges after he wounded seven people in a 2005 shooting rampage at Tacoma Mall — took a correctional officer hostage with a pair of scissors in the laundry and garment area of the prison, Lewis said.
While Maldonado held the officer, Newland took the keys to the forklift from the guard, unchained the machine and used it to burst out of the building.
Maldonado followed with the hostage, but surrendered after Newland was shot, the officials said at an evening news conference outside the state prison, which will remain in lockdown into next week.
The correctional officer who was taken hostage was treated for minor injuries, Lewis said.
Authorities erected a roadblock at the intersection of state Highway 112 and Eagle Crest Way — the road to the prison — for several hours while the facility was secured and the shooting investigated.
Officials at the prison — built to house 858 medium-, close- and maximum-custody offenders — accounted for all inmates immediately after the escape attempt.
Newland’s death occurred on the fifth anniversary of the date he led police to the body of Jamie Lynn Drake in Spokane.
The Spokesman Review said Newland was arrested in connection with the teen’s disappearance June 27, 2006, and led police to her body two days later.
He was convicted in November 2007 of the strangulation murder of Drake.
Newland would have been eligible for release in 2049, Lewis said.
Maldonado — who has been housed in the “close-security” unit, where he was allowed work time and visitors — has been transferred to the intensive management unit, where he will spend most of his time alone in a cell, prison officials said.
All inmates remain in their cells while the prison is under a lockdown, and they will remain so while law enforcement conducts an investigation, Lewis said.
Lewis said he believed the shooting was the first time an inmate has been killed at the prison since it opened in 1985.
Among the agencies assisting correctional officers during the lockdown and investigation were the Clallam County Sheriff’s Office, the State Patrol, the Port Angeles Police Department and U.S. Border Patrol.
The Correctional Industries program at Clallam Bay employs inmates as warehouse workers, groundskeepers, welders, mechanics, clerks and in a garment factory and the laundry facility.
Clallam Bay and the Washington State Penitentiary in Walla Walla are the state’s two highest-security prisons.
Wednesday’s escape attempt was the second in Washington state in less than a month but the first in recent memory at a high-security prison, Lewis said.
On June 14, 39-year-old James Edward Russell took off from the Olympic Corrections Center, a minimum-security work camp near Forks.
He was caught the next day after he knocked on the door of a cabin in the woods, only to find out the man renting the lodge was an off-duty guard at the prison he had just fled from.
In January, a female corrections officer, Jayme Biendl, 34, was found strangled in the chapel at the Monroe Correctional Complex. Byron Scherf, a three-strikes inmate, has been charged in her death.
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Reporter Arwyn Rice can be reached at 360-417-3535 or at arwyn.rice@peninsuladailynews.com.
Reporter Tom Callis and The Associated Press contributed to this report.