A man who fled the Adair County jail Tuesday in Greenfield is accused of stealing two vehicles while he made his getaway. Adair County sheriff Randy Marchant says Nick Leroy Briner of Des Moines had been transferred to his jail from Union County last Friday (January 21). The sheriff says there’s no current address in the prisoner’s file but he knows the man’s dealt with the law in the state of Missouri as well as Iowa. Briner was being held on 2 counts of motor vehicle theft, and he also had pending charges of burglary in Union County. Sheriff Marchant says at the time of those alleged crimes, Briner was out of prison on parole. The jail’s outside exercise yard is surrounded by a chain-link fence, and the sheriff says Briner somehow got it loose from the ground when he was out for the one hour a week of outdoor exercise mandated by Iowa law. There were other prisoners in the yard and Marchant says none of them left. After getting away from the jail in Greenfield, the man’s accused of stealing a vehicle in town, then abandoning it when he stole another outside town, a red Dodge pickup with Iowa license plate 980-MOZ. The sheriff says he’ll be getting arrest warrants for Briner for escape and burglary in connection with Tuesday’s flight.
