{"id":149646,"date":"2026-02-03T22:12:10","date_gmt":"2026-02-03T22:12:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/149646\/"},"modified":"2026-02-03T22:12:10","modified_gmt":"2026-02-03T22:12:10","slug":"tarrant-county-inmate-escapes-jail-van-captured-in-fort-worth-manhunt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/149646\/","title":{"rendered":"Tarrant County Inmate Escapes Jail Van, Captured In Fort Worth Manhunt"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">A Tarrant County jail inmate escaped from a transport van Monday morning but was captured within hours, wearing only boxers and a T-shirt.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">The <a href=\"https:\/\/www.fox4news.com\/news\/fort-worth-manhunt-escaped-inmate-ends-one-custody\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" data-ylk=\"slk:escape;elm:context_link;itc:0;sec:content-canvas\" class=\"link \">escape<\/a> of Carlos Rodriguez Romero, 27, prompted a multi-agency manhunt that shut down parts of Fort Worth and raised questions about transport security.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">Romero slipped through his handcuffs around 11:45 a.m. while being transported to a court appearance. He escaped the van near the 4600 block of Mark IV Parkway.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">The search involved K-9 units, Fort Worth police, and North Richland Hills officers. Authorities located Romero at a trailer park near Interstate 35W and Loop 820.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">Aerial video showed Romero in boxers and a white undershirt during his 1 p.m. capture. He was taken into custody blocks from his escape point.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">\u201cWhen chuckleheads decide to run from law enforcement, we\u2019ve had a great tradition in Tarrant County and our partners of putting them back where they need to be and keeping the community safe,\u201d Sheriff Bill Waybourn said at a press conference, Fox 4 KDFW reported.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">Romero had been arrested on December 4, 2025, on aggravated robbery and tampering charges. He now faces additional charges for the escape.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">Waybourn said his department will investigate the transport van\u2019s lock system. The sheriff promised changes to prevent future escapes.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">The incident marks another security breach for county jail transport operations. Officials have not disclosed how Romero managed to exit the moving vehicle.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Tarrant County jail inmate escaped from a transport van Monday morning but was captured within hours, wearing&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":149647,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[62211,62309,116,118,117,3737,62308,62310,62311],"class_list":{"0":"post-149646","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-fort-worth","8":"tag-carlos-rodriguez-romero","9":"tag-carlos-rodriguez-romero-image","10":"tag-fort-worth","11":"tag-fort-worth-headlines","12":"tag-fort-worth-news","13":"tag-fort-worth-police","14":"tag-tarrant","15":"tag-transport-security","16":"tag-transport-van"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/149646","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=149646"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/149646\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/149647"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=149646"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=149646"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=149646"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}