Ramone Alston Jacobia Crisp | Orange County Sheriff speaks out after Hillsborough jailbreak

HILLABOROUGH, NC (WTVD) – If Orange County Sheriff Charles Blackwood had it to do over again, he would have called Maleah Williams' family sooner.

“I blame myself for not reaching out to them sooner and saying, 'Hey, this happened. Are you guys still safe?'” Blackwood told ABC11.

Blackwood said his daughter went to school with a member of the Williams family and was close friends.

Maleah, 1, was killed in Chapel Hill in 2015. The man who was tried and convicted for that crime was Ramone Alston – the same man who escaped from a prison transport vehicle outside UNC Hillsborough Hospitals a week ago.

“If I've learned anything, it's that I need to be a little more aware of what's going on outside my periphery when these things were happening, and I hate that it happened the way it did,” Blackwood said. “They didn't open it, it was opened for them.”

Blackwood said he was baffled why Alston was driven all the way from the state prison in Bertie County to Hillsborough for treatment.

The Department of Adult Correction said it has a contract with UNC Health to provide the care and that Alston had a previous appointment with a gastroenterologist.

“I know there are hospitals between here and Bertie County that they passed by to get here,” he said.

Blackwood said Alston ran away from the Hillsborough parking lot last Tuesday, but could not say specifically whether his alleged accomplice, Jacobia Crisp, picked him up there or later helped him.

The two had met after his imprisonment, and he said he had experienced something like this before.

“You have one person desperately seeking companionship,” Blackwood said. “Another person desperately needs some form of validation and the two meet and develop a bond,” he said.

He would like to see two things improved in the future.

One of them is to reduce the number of transfers of prisoners after their imprisonment, for example for court appearances.

“We're putting our officers and our staff at risk when we move inmates,” he said. “We're also putting the inmate at risk because if he or she jumps out and runs away, there's a chance they could get shot or someone could get hurt,” Blackwood said.

The other option is to create a safety zone for correctional officers in case they need to take an inmate to the hospital.

He said this was also problematic because it could put a nurse or doctor at risk.

“If he was determined to escape and the opportunity wasn't there in the parking lot, then he would have wanted to find an opportunity inside where he might be able to arrest someone,” Blackwood said.

ABC11 asked if he believed Alston had any help from the inside. He did not elaborate, but said it's easy for corrections officers and everyone else to become complacent. It's his job as a leader to remind his staff that this kind of thing can happen.

ABC11 also reached out to the Department of Adult Correction for further comment.