Escaped New Orleans inmate Derrick Groves captured after standoff in Atlanta, police say

The last of 10 inmates who escaped from the Orleans Parish Prison in May was captured Wednesday in Southwest Atlanta after a brief standoff, according to the Orleans Parish Sheriff’s Office.

Derrick Groves’ arrest marks the end of a months-long, multi-agency manhunt that began after he and nine other inmates escaped from the Orleans Parish facility on May 16, 2025.

Groves was taken into custody near Delowe Drive SW & W Cedar Lane SW following a coordinated operation involving Crimestoppers Greater New Orleans, the U.S. Marshals Service, the FBI, Homeland Security Investigations, Louisiana State Police, the New Orleans Police Department, the Atlanta Police Department, and other agencies.

Following the arrest, New Orleans District Attorney Williams issued a statement saying, “Groves’ escape represented a serious breach of public safety and a historic failure of custodial security. His capture brings long-awaited calm to victims, their families, the witnesses who testified, the assistant district attorneys who prosecuted him, and the people of New Orleans who were rightly concerned that a convicted violent offender had escaped so easily and evaded justice for so long.”We will pursue every available legal avenue to ensure that Derrick Groves answers for every crime he has committed and every consequence he has sought to avoid.”

Williams added that the collaboration among local, state, and federal authorities was key to locating Groves and safely bringing him into custody. 

Further details about the standoff and Groves’ extradition plans were not immediately released.

New Orleans jailbreak 

On May 16, Groves and nine other men broke out of the Orleans Justice Center by fleeing through a hole behind a toilet, prompting an elaborate nationwide manhunt. Within 24 hours, three escapees were tracked down and captured by law enforcement, while several others were taken back into custody within a few weeks. 

In July,  Dkenan Dennis, Gary Price, Robert Moody, Kendell Myles, Corey Boyd, Lenton VanBuren, Jermaine Donald, Antoine Massey, and Leo Tate pleaded not guilty to charges of simple escape.

Orleans Parish Sheriff Susan Hutson told CBS News in an exclusive interview earlier this year that prison staffing and design flaws played a major role in the breakout.   

Sheriff Hutson said the Orleans Parish Justice Center jail, built in 2016, was poorly constructed from the start.  

“There are major design flaws in it that make it unsafe for those who are housed here and make it unsafe for those who work here,” Hutson told CBS News. “And I included the locks and other mechanisms that I don’t want to talk about on camera that are safety issues. But we talked about this, and we alerted everybody in the system.” 

A former jail employee who allegedly was involved in a relationship with Groves during his incarceration is accused of helping him coordinate the escape.  Authorities believe she arranged phone calls that avoided the jail’s monitoring system. She is one of at least 16 people, including many family members of the escapees, who are facing charges for providing transport, food, shelter, and cash to the fugitives.

Who is Derrick Groves? 

According to court records, Groves, who goes by “Woo,” dropped out of school in ninth grade and sold heroin in New Orleans’ Lower Ninth Ward for years. The FBI began monitoring his social media while he was still a teenager, and Groves pleaded guilty to federal drug trafficking charges in 2019.

Groves has been in jail since at least 2019, after his involvement in four killings over 18 months.

In October 2024, a jury convicted Groves of second-degree murder for using an assault rifle to fire dozens of bullets into a family block party on Mardi Gras. 

21-year-old Byron Jackson and 26-year-old Jamar Robinson were killed, and several others were wounded. He faces life imprisonment without parole, but administrative delays have kept him in jail for years instead of a more secure prison facility.

Groves later pleaded guilty to manslaughter charges in two separate shootings, according to the Orleans Parish District Attorney’s office.