Escaped prisoner captured

PALMER — A 44-year-old convicted felon who escaped from the recreation yard at the Mat-Su Pre-Trial Facility this morning has been captured.

Kent Charles Matte was taken into custody at about 2:30 p.m. near the Parks Highway and Stanley Road in Wasilla, the Alaska State Troopers report. The circumstances surrounding the excape are under investigation and weren’t immediately released.

A search, which included putting area schools on lockdown and businesses on alert, began at about 8:05 a.m. when Matte scaled a fence at Mat-Su Pre-Trial.

Matte is described as a white man, 6-foot-1 and weighing 220 pounds. He was last seen wearing a yellow jumpsuit or a yellow shirt with a pink undershirt and gray pants. Troopers say the Matte is either bald or has very short red hair and tattoos on both his arms. The tattoo on his left arm is a tribal tattoo. His right arm is “covered with tattoos of flowers and faces,” troopers report.

Traffic on emergency band channels this morning gave the impression troopers were working with Palmer police and other law enforcement in the area to track down the man. Radio traffic indicated multiple officers were tracking down leads all over the city on foot and in patrol cars.

Mat-Su Borough schools locked their doors and were keeping students inside after troopers informed school district officials of the escape.

“All of our schools are operating in a stay-put mode,” said school district spokeswoman Catherine Esary. “Our exterior entrances and exits are remaining locked.”

She said classes continued as normal, but everyone stayed inside their buildings. That decision obviously affects things like field trips but, Esary said, that doesn’t mean activities are necessarily canceled. Law enforcement was looking to apprehend the suspect and if that happened over the course of the day, the district said it would decide what to do about those kinds of activities.

“Those kinds of decisions might be affected by what happens in the next hour,” Esary said. “Primarily for the time being parents just need to know that their children are safe.”

Palmer Police deferred questions about the investigation to the troopers, who are running the operation.

Palmer’s director of emergency services Jon Owen said that the police department is doing everything it can to help.

“Every hand is on deck helping out AST with this,” Owen said.

He personally was working through a list of city organizations that the department feels should have been notified about the escape.

“Airport businesses are being notified and we’re trying to make other notifications as you and I speak,” Owen said.