State-funded Perry County facility housed convicted murderer, triple attempted murder defendant alongside reentry program participants under informal Dallas County jail arrangement
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- Johnny Bush
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- Kevin Gunn
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- Marquavious Billingsley
The Perry County PREP Center has been one of Alabama’s most celebrated criminal justice innovations. Since opening in 2022, the residential reentry facility in Uniontown has graduated 232 men with a reported zero-percent recidivism rate, earned praise from Gov. Kay Ivey, and drawn national attention as a model for keeping people out of prison.
On Saturday, four inmates broke out of it.
They faked a medical emergency, overpowered a correctional officer, and ran to a getaway car driven by a Selma woman who had been waiting outside. Court records filed Monday in Perry County describe a coordinated escape at approximately 1:29 a.m. The driver, Keivona Shabrion Lewis, 29, was arrested within two hours. She faces five felony charges.
Two of the four inmates are back in custody. Two remain at large, including a convicted murderer. And a review of court records by Watchman Media Group reveals something the initial news reports did not: three of the four escapees were not PREP Center participants at all. They were Dallas County jail inmates, pretrial detainees facing murder, attempted murder, and armed robbery charges, housed at the state reentry facility because Dallas County has not had a functioning jail since a tornado destroyed it in January 2023.
The PREP Center, the Parole and Probation Reentry Education and Employment Program, was designed for a specific population: probationers and parolees completing 90-day cohorts of substance abuse treatment, mental health counseling from GEO Reentry, and workforce training through J.F. Ingram State Technical College. The Legislature appropriated $19 million in 2021 to buy and renovate the former Perry County Correctional Facility, a privately operated 738-bed prison on Highway 80 east of Uniontown that had sat largely empty for years. Bureau of Pardons and Paroles Director Cam Ward has kept the program deliberately small (about 80 men at a time) to protect the integrity of the programming.
But beginning in 2023, the facility took on a second function. After an EF-2 tornado tore the roof off the Dallas County Jail in Selma, Sheriff Mike Granthum approached Ward about housing inmates. Ward told Alabama Daily News in December 2024 that Dallas County rents space at the facility, pays for food and utilities, and provides its own staffing. He described the two populations as separate.
“We’re cooperating with (Dallas County) until they get a new jail built,” Ward said.
More than three years later, the jail remains closed. On May 29, the day before the escape, the Dallas County Commission approved a $21 million construction bid. Granthum estimated 14 to 18 months to completion.
In the wake of Saturday’s escape, officials moved to draw a line between the two populations. WAKA reported that officials said the facility from which the inmates escaped “is not part of Alabama Pardons and Paroles.”
Who escaped
The distinction is significant because of what court records show about who was actually housed there. Marquavious Billingsley, 24, of Selma, who remains at large, pleaded guilty to felony murder in August 2025 in connection with a 2018 shooting death on Marie Foster Street in Selma. He was sentenced to 240 months split 60 months with probation. Because he had accumulated more than 79 months of jail credit, he was released directly onto probation at sentencing.
Within four months he was charged with first-degree assault in a separate incident. The Bureau of Pardons and Paroles authorized his arrest for a probation violation in February 2026. He was held without bond. The district attorney’s office filed a motion to revoke his probation on the murder case, with a hearing set for May 28 — two days before the escape. Had the court revoked probation, Billingsley faced up to 15 years of suspended prison time. His case history includes five separate promoting prison contraband charges.
Jaden Christopher Maxwell, 21, was awaiting trial on three counts of attempted murder across two separate shooting cases from 2024, with jury trials set for Aug. 3, 2026. Maxwell turned himself in Sunday night and has been charged in Perry County with first-degree escape for allegedly overpowering a correctional officer during the breakout.
Kevin Gunn, 19, who also remains at large, was indicted on first-degree robbery for allegedly robbing a woman at gunpoint, trafficking in stolen identities, and converting a pistol to a machine gun. His robbery trial was set for Oct. 5, 2026.
The fourth escapee, Johnny Dave Harris Bush Jr., 29, is the only one whose profile fits the PREP Center’s mission. Alabama Department of Corrections records show Bush was convicted in Etowah County on property crime charges, was classified at the lowest custody level, and had been on work release since at least 2023. He was arrested Sunday in Midfield after police spotted him driving a vehicle stolen from a Selma restaurant.
Saturday’s escape was not the first security incident involving Dallas County inmates at the Uniontown facility. In December 2025, the Times-Standard-Herald reported that an inmate at the same facility, also from Dallas County, attempted to escape and then placed phone calls from inside the facility while impersonating a staff member to try to arrange his own release.
The building itself carries a longer history. When it operated as a private prison under LCS Corrections Services, two inmates escaped in 2009 and were recaptured after an armed standoff in North Dakota. The state pulled its prisoners after learning the contractor had taken more than eleven hours to report the escape.
Notification was again an issue Saturday. The escape occurred around 1:30 a.m. Independent journalist Robert Shepherd reported it via social media Saturday afternoon. Officials did not officially release names and photographs until Saturday evening, hours after the breakout, prompting criticism from residents who had no idea four inmates facing violent felony charges were at large in their community.
The escape puts a spotlight on an arrangement that has operated largely out of public view. The formal terms of the agreement between the Bureau of Pardons and Paroles and the Dallas County Sheriff’s Department have not been publicly disclosed. It is unclear how many Dallas County inmates are currently housed at the facility, what charges they face, or what security standards apply to a population that includes individuals held without bond on violent felony charges.
The PREP Center was built for people on their way out of the system. Three of the four men who escaped Saturday were on their way deeper into it: facing trials, revocation hearings, and the prospect of decades in prison. The question is whether anyone assessed whether the facility designed for one purpose was adequate for the other, and who bears responsibility now that it has failed at both.
Billingsley and Gunn remain at large. Anyone with information is urged to call 911 and not to approach or attempt to apprehend them.
