State troopers, sheriff's deputies and game wardens all are searching for a convicted sex offender from Washington who escaped about 4 p.m. today from a prisoner transport van east of Valley City, N.D.
As of 10:45 p.m., he still was on the lam.
As first reported by KFGO radio in Fargo, Joseph Megna, a sex offender being taken from Washington state to New Hampshire, escaped when the van stopped about two miles west of Tower City, on Interstate 94, this afternoon. It happened about 4:10 p.m., said Nancy Tougas, dispatcher with the Barnes County Sheriff's Department.
Megna was seen running into a cornfield on the north side of I-94 and a perimeter was set up to search the field. But by 8:30 p.m., searchers had begun to think Megna no longer was in the field, Tougas said. And Megna had escaped from his handcuffs, too.
The search, which includes a Highway Patrol airplane, and sheriff's deputies and other law officers from Barnes, Cass and Stutsman counties, is focused on a field north of I-94, 14 miles east of Valley City or about 50 miles west of Fargo.
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People who live in the area were being contacted via a "code red," telephone messaging system to alert them about the escapee, Tougas said.
He is a white male, 29, who is 5 feet, 7 inches tall, 160 pounds, with curly red hair, wearing a red shirt, blue jeans and black tennis shoes, Tougas said.
He apparently escaped from his handcuffs, which were found, Tougas said.
According to the Dru Sjodin National Sex Offender registry, Megna, 29, is a high-risk sex offender from Pasco, Wash., according to the Forum of Fargo-Moorhead.
Megna was convicted in April 2009, after admitting he hosted a party and gave alcohol to numerous teens, inappropriately touching three of them and exposing himself outside an apartment, the Forum reported.
