Archive: Around Town

The area around the Lansing Residential Center in South Lansing was speckled with State Police vehicles Sunday when four 16 year old girls escaped from the limited security facility that serves court-placed delinquent girls.  The girls bolted while being escorted between buildings soon after 10am, running across the street and across a field toward Armstrong Road.  Two of the girls, Deanna Diaz of Brooklyn and Kristina Cardinal of Remsen, NY, were captured almost immediately by Residential Center staff.


But Crystal Jelicks and Lindsay A. Smith managed to get away.  State Police vehicles were dotted around the area near the Town Hall, Van Ostrand, Peruville, and Buck Roads, surrounding the detention facility.  "We had the troop cars to establish a perimeter," says State Police Investigator Michael Soroka.  "Ideally that keeps the escaped girls contained in a local area to make it easier to search for them." 

A police helicopter was in the air by 11:30 or noon Sunday, landing behind the Town Hall between search sweeps.  It was back the next morning as the search continued.   Descriptions of the girls were released to local news media with a request for tips if they were sighted.  Jelicks was described as blonde-haired, 5-foot-6, 125 pounds, and Smith described as brown-haired, 5-foot-2, 190 pounds.

Soroka says there were some reported sightings, but that they are not always reliable.  "You get reported sightings," he explains.  "That doesn't mean the person who was sited is the person you are looking for.  One lady reported her own husband who was working in blue clothes."  But the police got a break when the foster mother of Lansing resident James Hall, 16, called the police to say girls had been there and her foster son had left with them.  Hall had given the girls a change of clothing, making it harder for police to identify them.

The three teenagers walked as far as a residence on Cliff Street in Ithaca, where they were picked up after someone who knew Hall called in a positive sighting at 7:15 Monday morning.  By the time they were captured later that morning at least 20 State Police Bureau of Criminal Investigation (BCI) and around 15 additional uniformed troopers were involved.  The Tompkins County Sheriff's Department, Environmental Conservation Officers, and Trumansburg Police also assisted on the case.

The teenagers were brought back to Lansing Town Court where the four girls were charged and arraigned with second degree escape, a felony.  Bail was set at $5,000 for each girl.  Hall was charged with hindering prosecution in the third degree, a class A misdemeanor.  His bail was set at $2,500.  All five were boarded out from the Tompkins County Jail to Chenango County Jail.

Soroka explains that Lansing has arraignment, or preliminary jurisdiction over the case, but if the charges are pursued or maintained as felony charges they will be transferred to the county court, because Lansing doesn't have trial jurisdiction over felonies. 

"I am generally pleased with the way the whole operation worked," Soroka  says.  "All the agencies involved worked very well.  All the agencies cooperated, were very, very helpful, and it came together very nicely in the end.  Ultimately they were captured and nobody got hurt.  How could you not be pleased?"

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