Westmoreland prison inmate planned to use wire from face masks in foiled escape plan, detectives say

A Westmoreland County Prison inmate is accused of using the small pieces of wire in the face masks used to prevent the spread of covid-19 to fashion a weapon he intended to use to help him escape from a court appearance, authorities said.

The alleged escape plan by inmate Dennis M. Shank, 43, was foiled June 25 after another prisoner who heard the plan tipped prison guards who performed a “shakedown” of Shank’s cell in the Hempfield lockup and discovered multiple “sharp metal” items, according to county detectives.

According to detectives, the guards seized two long, thin pieces of sharp metal rolled inside his jail-issued footwear plus a third sharp piece of metal Shank had allegedly stashed inside the arm of a nearby desk chair, Detective James Williams said.

“An inmate (who knew Shank) was hearing Shank making statements about his (preliminary) hearing on June 28. He was stating he was going to escape using the metal for a key or weapon,” Williams said.

“Shank stated he was giving himself ROR (release on recognizance bond) and if anyone got in his way, he was going to poke them to get away,” Williams said.

According to court documents, the informant specifically described all of the items that Shank mentioned. Detectives reported he had obtained the metal by extracting it from disposable masks used to prevent the spread of covid-19.

According to online dockets, Shank, who has listed recent addresses in Greensburg, Latrobe, Ligonier and Indiana County, had been incarcerated multiple times locally this spring for separate incidents.

He was ordered to jail on $15,000 bond in May when he was arrested by county park police at the courthouse on a 2021 warrant for providing authorities with a fake urine sample during a court-ordered drug test in the spring of 2021.

He was subsequently charged by state police with multiple drug-related complaints as a result of a March 2021 investigation in Hempfield and he has another pending complaint for providing state police with a false identification and possession of a controlled substance in New Stanton, according to dockets.

According to court dockets, he allegedly planned to escape during a preliminary hearing June 28 before Hempfield District Judge Mark Mansour on the Hempfield drug charges. After jail guards confiscated the metal items, he waived his right to a hearing on the case to common pleas court for trial.

He also waived the other pending cases, according to court dockets.

Shank’s scheduled hearing on the new complaints is July 19.