The third juvenile runaway from the Woodward Academy was caught shortly before 9 a.m. Monday and returned to the school, according to an academy spokesperson.
“Everybody’s home,” said Shawn Hollenkamp, executive director of the Woodward Academy. Hollenkamp declined to discuss the circumstances of the Sunday escape or the corporate policy governing the academy’s handling of escapes.
“We actually don’t comment on those kinds of incidents,” he said.
The young fugitive was taken into custody along Iowa Highway 141 while walking in the median strip between the eastbound and westbound lanes of the highway, according to an eye witness.
Mindy Miner of Perry said she was driving on Iowa Highway 141 about 8:45 a.m. Monday when she saw someone walking eastward in the median. She immediately called 911, she said.
“I called the police,” Miner said. “I asked if they had found the kids yet because I hadn’t seen ThePerryNews.com’s update this morning that two were found. They said two were caught and one was still missing when I called.”
She said she “circled back around” after calling law enforcement in order to “make sure he was still there,” and found the youth already in custody.
“Somebody had just reached him and had him face down on the ground,” Miner said. “The person there was in a regular truck, but it had a blue light on the dashboard, like he was a first responder or something or maybe worked for Woodward.”
Miner said the runaway was conspicuous in the median.
“I think he wanted to be caught and get it over with it after a night alone in the cold and dark,” she said. “I felt a little sorry for him. You know, 98 percent of those kids there come from horrible homes.”
Three juvenile residents of the Woodward Academy in Woodward fled the school shortly after 6:30 p.m. Sunday. Two of the runaways were caught about 11 p.m. Sunday near the Moran curve on Iowa Highway 141.
Three people from Des Moines were also arrested Sunday night for aiding and abetting the escapees, according to Woodward Police Department Chief Joe Cox. The identities of the three accomplices have not been released at this hour.
Cox said he works closely with the Woodward Academy authorities on incidences of runaways, which occur “probably a couple of times a year.” He said the Dallas County Sheriff’s office and Boone County Sheriff’s office also assisted in the investigation.
ThePerryNews.com will update this story as information becomes available.
Once again, great coverage of this local story when no other news media even mentioned the happenings. You truly are Perry’s local news source.
Thanks as always for your flattering words, John. It’s nice to be appreciated. Maybe you should consider becoming an evangel for ThePerryNews.com and carrying the good news to the many local businesses who haven’t heard the word. Our commissions are generous.
I find Ms. Miner’s quote about “98 percent of those kids come from horrible homes” absolutely ridiculous. While I applaud her calling in and reporting seeing the third kid, what reason was there in quoting that? My son was at Woodward. After almost a year of working with juvenile court, he was smoking marijuana and not going to school. He comes from a very good home, with family that tried everything they could to straighten him out. Some time at Woodward was the answer. He graduates this spring and has been accepted to Creighton University. While we may fall into Ms. Miner’s supposed 2 percent of good homes, the program at Woodward is amazing, as are the staff, and the impact they make on young men is as well amazing. That would have made more sense to quote instead of quoting an ignorant woman who has probably not ever stepped foot in the Academy.
No one here is actually criticizing the facility itself. Our point is your case is atypical. I too have spent some time with quite a few young men from the Academy, so I know very well that the vast majority of them come from and are returned to the most deplorable of circumstances. Stated simply, most of them have virtually no chance at all of fitting into the system. The Academy mostly takes in kids from a square-pegged culture and attempts to turn them into round-edged people. This would be well and fine if these young men had any other place to return to other than the messed up environment they came from. My suggestion is it’s more efficient to detoxify different parts of our society than to continuously deal with young people who have been poisoned.