Danelo Cavalcante, the convicted murderer whose prison break sparked a two-week search, was apprehended by tactical teams in Pennsylvania on Wednesday, September 13.
According to officials, Cavalcante had intended to carjack someone before leaving the country.
Cavalcante Recounts What Happened After Escaping
US Marshals Service supervisory deputy Robert Clark told CBS News Philadelphia that Cavalcante had said to law officials following his re-arrest that he planned to head to Canada.
Cavalcante informed police after his capture that, within the almost two-week search, he hid behind bushes and leaves. Search crews even almost walked or stepped on him many times. He told officials that to survive, he ate a stolen watermelon and drank water from a nearby creek for food and water.
Clark stated that when they caught Cavalcante this week, they found a razor blade in his bag. After he escaped from the Chester County Prison in West Chester on the morning of August 31 (about an hour's drive from Philadelphia), he reportedly used the blade to remove his beard and mustache.
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Officials Release Status Reports During Manhunt
For a while, police looked in and around Longwood Gardens in Chester County, where they thought Cavalcante would be hiding.
During news briefings held earlier in the manhunt, Lt. Col. George Bivens of the state police force explained that the substantially wooded area of Longwood Gardens atop a complex network of underground tunnels posed a number of challenges for authorities. Some of the said tunnels ran under construction sites and could not be properly secured.
On Saturday, September 9, Cavalcante had broken through the security barrier around Longwood Gardens and was seen on doorbell surveillance footage outside the house of a former work associate. One of two former coworkers he had tried to contact that evening. Officials said they saw him in a stolen white van with a rooftop freezer in the Longwood Gardens neighborhood.
Cavalcante advised authorities he had scouted out the first perimeter at Longwood Gardens so he would know where to go if he were to escape. He only had fled the area as search teams closed in.
On Monday night, September 11, Cavalcante broke into a house in Chester County and took a .22-caliber rifle before fleeing the scene in the face of gunfire from the homeowner.
Cavalcante had just escaped from Chester County Prison, where he was serving a life term without the possibility of parole for the 2021 first-degree murder of his ex-girlfriend, Deborah Brandao. Currently, he is doing his time at the maximum-security Pennsylvania prison known as SCI Phoenix.
