Suspect jumps out window -- twice

Chicago-Sun Times

Inside and out, Michael Jones probably feels a little sore right about now.

On Tuesday, while under police custody at Saint Anthony Hospital, the 22-year-old Chicagoan expelled 11 small bags of suspected cocaine he had allegedly swallowed.

And then on Wednesday, Jones -- while barefoot and in leg irons -- allegedly leaped out a sixth-floor window in an attempt to escape from the hospital, said Bill Cunningham, a spokesman for the Cook County sheriff's office.

Jones was in stable condition Wednesday at Mount Sinai Hospital, Cunningham said.

On Tuesday, Jones was being held at Saint Anthony on suspicion of possessing cocaine. The next day, after passing the suspected drugs, Jones went into a bathroom on the hospital's sixth floor, Cunningham said. A Cook County correctional officer assigned to guard him went into the bathroom after hearing a commotion, Cunningham said.

But the officer could only watch as Jones allegedly jumped out of the bathroom window, plummeting to a third-floor landing.

When Jones couldn't get back into the building on that floor, he threw himself off the landing and fell another three floors before hitting the ground, Cunningham said.

Escape charge expected

And then, remarkably, Jones got up and hobbled away. He was arrested less than two blocks away while hiding in a garden, Cunningham said.

Jones is expected to be charged with escape.

"But he did not set the record for floor-jumping," Cunningham said.

In the early 1990s, a Cook County Jail inmate who had been released on electronic home monitoring jumped out a window of his 11th-floor South Side apartment after sheriff's deputies arrived to serve a warrant. That man also survived and, like Jones, was arrested the same day.