Police captured escaped inmate James Walker Morales, 35, Thursday night. He had been on the run for six days after breaking out of the Wyatt Detention Center in Central Falls, RI on New Year's Eve. Morales was scheduled to appear Friday morning before U.S. District Court Magistrate Judge Patricia A. Sullivan at the federal courthouse in Providence, RI.
The beginning of the end for Morales started in Cambridge where he attempted to rob a bank. The former U.S. Army reservist is from Cambridge and knows the neighborhood well, so when Morales escaped, police and the FBI were certain that he made his way there. Around 9 a.m. Thursday, security cameras inside the Bank of America in Central Square caught him on tape passing a note to a teller. The note demanded money, but Morales fled the bank without a dime, heading toward Harvard Square. Police went door to door in a futile search. Bank of America customer Shalini Pammal said she was caught by surprise by the heightened police activity.
“It was around 9-9:15 and I went to the Bank of America on Mass. Ave in Central Square to withdraw money," she said. "The bank was closed, actually, and there were police inside. I actually didn’t know what was happening until I exited and heard that there was a robbery.”
Another Bank of America customer, Aiden Richards, said he was shocked by the incident.
“It’s just kind of crazy to think that someone from Rhode Island or something would come all the way up here and then rob a bank," he said.
By 1 p.m. Cambridge and Somerville residents began receiving robocalls from the FBI to be on the lookout for the suspect. One part of the message many heard on their voicemail was this:
"The suspects resembles recently escaped federal prisoner James Walker Morales, who escaped from the Wyatt Detention Center last week in Rhode Island. Morales is currently being sought by the U.S. Marshals Service."
The FBI, local and state police spread out across Cambridge and Somerville and staked out banks in the area. They considered Morales to be dangerous and possibly armed. He was serving time for breaking into the Lincoln Stoddard Army Reserve Center in Worcester and stealing 16 guns, including six assault rifles. Morales also faces child rape charges in Massachusetts. He escaped the Rhode Island detention center by climbing onto a roof and scaling barbed wire fences. Police followed a trail of blood to an underpass and a parking lot where Morales had stolen a car. They lost him there but found the vehicle in Framingham, where an ex-girlfriend reportedly lived.
Helicopters flew over Central Square in Cambridge Thursday in the hours after the attempted bank robbery. Morales’ face was plastered on law enforcement Facebook sites and on television news programs.
Police said Morales made his way to Somerville, where in the late afternoon he passed a note to a teller at the Citizens Bank on Broadway. Like his earlier attempt in Cambridge, he ended up with nothing. He left the bank and was spotted by state police in the vicinity of Route 28 and Mystic Ave. After a short chase on foot, James Walker Morales was caught and Cambridge and Somerville residents exhaled. Cambridge resident Shalini Pammal, whose day began at the Bank of America, was one of them.
“I’m relieved because I never thought something like this would happen in Central Square, in Cambridge, no less," she said. "But happy that he was caught.”
