HUNTSVILLE, Texas -- The same makeshift body armor that helped a condemned killer escape from Texas' death row dragged him to his death just a few minutes later when he sank to the bottom of a river and drowned, officials said Friday.
An autopsy on Martin Gurule, 29 -- who escaped from the Ellis Unit prison in Huntsville just after midnight on Nov. 27 -- found that he was so weighed down by extra clothes and magazines and cardboard strapped to his body that he could not stay afloat when he jumped into a river near the prison.Using elastic bandages, Gurule had strapped the magazines to his arms and the cardboard to his torso for protection against the razor-sharp wire that topped two 10-foot-high chain-link fences he scaled in his dramatic escape on Thanksgiving night.
He ran to freedom under a hail of bullets from guards in towers 200 feet away. The autopsy, performed by the Harris County Medical Examiner Joy Carter in Houston, found Gurule suffered a "superficial" gunshot wound to the back that would not have killed him.
Carter said Gurule had been dead seven days, meaning he died shortly after the escape.
"We believe he ran from the prison and went straight to the river," said Texas Department of Criminal Justice spokesman Larry Todd.