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Jan. 26--A Sallisaw Police Department dispatcher was fired Friday for failing to act when he received a report that an escaped murder suspect had been spotted.
Richard Crutchfield was terminated from his dispatcher position with the Sallisaw Police Department, for what Sallisaw City Manager Bill Baker described to the Times Record as "unsatisfactory job performance."
Crutchfield was terminated after officials learned that on Jan. 14, he advised a Sallisaw gas station employee to call the Sequoyah County Sheriff's Office when the employee reported to him that escapee Justin Patrick Welch was in her store.
Welch escaped from a private transport company at about 2:45 a.m. Jan. 13, during a stop at a rest area in Van Buren.
Authorities have said Welch used a tire plug wrench to stab the guard before he beat him and stole his gun. Welch found the tire plug wrench in the van during the trip.
Once outside the restroom, Welch fired multiple shots near an unarmed guard who was asleep in the van. Welch, authorities said, stole the transport van and drove it for less than two miles before parking the van in a wooded area behind Rena Elementary School, 720 Rena Road.
Welch was arrested near Sallisaw on Jan. 14 after a truck driver he hitched a ride with notified authorities by text message that he noticed Welch had a gun.
Police pulled over the tractor-trailer on Interstate 40 about two miles west of Sallisaw and placed Welch under arrest without incident.
Welch, 26, of French Camp, Calif., was one of five inmates traveling through the area with North Atlantic Extradition Service, a private prisoner transport company based in Columbus, Miss. After Welch waived extradition on Jan. 14, Oklahoma and Wisconsin authorities worked together to make sure Welch made it to his destination, the detention center in Waukesha County, Wis. Welch was booked into the jail on Jan. 15.
Welch had been accused of traveling to Wisconsin and stabbing a woman to death as part of a murder-for-hire scheme so the woman's ex-boyfriend could get custody of the couple's 4-year-old son, according to the Waukesha County, Wis., Sheriff's Department.
As a result of the Jan. 13 escape, Welch faces charges in Van Buren of two felony attempted capital murder counts, first-degree escape, aggravated robbery, three theft of property counts, second-degree battery and kidnapping.
