Inmate Causes Flurry Of Questions After Fleeing Amid Kentucky Candle Factory Devastation

On Friday night, a tornado touched down on a candle factory in Mayfield, Kentucky. The building was described as “flattened.” Although it was believed that 110 people were inside the building at the time of its collapse and only 40 were saved, it’s starting to look like the casualties were not as high as first feared.

A survivor named Kyanna Parsons-Perez, who spent her 40th birthday trapped for hours under five feet of debris, described the disheartening scene of her former workplace after she was finally freed.

“I mean, if you look at the pictures, I literally had to climb up out of the building after it fell on us,” she explained. “I was one of the last people to make it out of the little area that I was in. I think there were about six or seven of us. We couldn’t breathe. People were going in and out of consciousness.”

She also applauded the inmates who had been brought over by a nearby to help aid in the search for survivors.

“They had some prisoners working there from the Graves County Jail and when I tell you those prisoners were working their tails off to get us out,” she added. “They were helping. And to see inmates – because, you know, they could have used that moment to try to get away – they did not. They were there. They were helping us and once they got one person out, we all kind of just fell out. We were able to get the debris under us to move around and we were able to get out.”

However, an inmate did use the tragedy to escape and is still on the run.

The Graves County inmate was actually working inside the factory as part of a work-release program when the building collapsed.

Although his fellow inmates helped him get to the local Jackson Purchase Medical Center, police say that he simply walked out the door of the hospital when he was discharged and didn’t look back.

Police identified the man as Francisco Starks, 44. He was serving time for third-degree burglary, theft by unlawful taking of an automobile, and receiving stolen property.

According to the Graves County Jailer, George Workman, there were seven inmates who were working at the factory to help build “a work ethic and hopefully have some funding when they get out.”

Update: According to the Kentucky State Police, Starks has since turned himself into the Calloway County Jail.

On Monday morning, Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear revealed that there were at least 64 confirmed deaths in his state after a tornado ripped through homes and businesses for over 200 miles, which might set a new record for the longest tornado in history if confirmed.

At least five states were struck by tornadoes on Friday night into early Saturday morning, including Arkansas, Illinois, Kentucky, Missouri, and Tennessee. Six workers were killed in an Amazon warehouse northeast of St. Louis, Illinois, when the wall the length of a football field collapsed, causing the roof to cave in.

Many survivors in these states are currently without homes, electricity, and some are even without running water. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has been deployed in Kentucky, where a reported 300 National Guard workers are going door to door to help as many survivors as they can.