Many inmates dream about escaping from prison or jail, even if their freedom is short-lived. That’s what two women in Ohio thought when they broke out of the Stark Regional Community Correction Center by leaping from a roof and over some razor wire. It took awhile before staff noticed that the pair was missing and contacted police. This led to a wide search for the duo as law enforcement attempted to narrow in on their location.
Inmates used a robe to escape from the facility
On October 12 at around 7 p.m., 40-year-old Hope Skerett and 29-year-old Kerriah Ohler escape from the Stark Regional Community Correction Center in Louisville and dashed off into a nearby nature reserve, according to a report by the Canon Police Department, per local outlet News 5 Cleveland.
In December 2025, Skerett was sentenced to the corrections center after pleading guilty to breaking and entering and felony drug charges. Meanwhile, Ohler was sentenced to the center after a fourth-degree felony failure-to-comply conviction.
The female duo had climbed onto the roof of a building and then tossed a pink robe over the sharp razor wire to ensure they didn’t get cut, as confirmed by Mike Beebe, the executive director of the facility. From there, they climbed a fence, crawled through the wire, and then jumped off the roof onto the ground before fleeing into the Fairhope Nature Preserve to the south of the facility.
Beebe called the escape “extremely bold and extremely daring,” admitting that the “razor ribbon is extremely sharp.”
It wasn’t until staff at the facility were closing the outdoor area for the night that they realized that Skerett and Ohler was nowhere to be found. They discovered a shoe along the outside of the fence and the robe over the razor wire before alerting the police within about 20 minutes.
Police deployed a drone to inspect the building’s roof. However, all they found was a pair of tennis shoes belonging to one of the escapees. They then used a K-9 unit to track the women’s path through the preserve, using some of the dark-colored clothing they had discarded as a way for the canines to trace their scent. However, the women were still not found.
The criminal duo were found in a literal hole in a wall
Officers then learned from an “unnamed individual within the facility” about the pair’s escape plan. The investigative report said that Skerett and Ohler planned to escape and “be picked up near Walmart on US62” as a means of making their way to Florida. They found one of them was wearing all black while the other was wearing a gray sweatshirt and black pants.
According to a report by WTUZ, officers from Dover Police assisted U.S. Marshals in capturing the criminal duo. Dover Police Captain Michelle Seibert said that marshals received a tip from a man renting an apartment in the 600 block of Race Street, which is about a 30-minute drive from the correctional facility.
Officers then met marshals at the scene at around 5:30 p.m. the following day and searched the residence with a police dog, who was able to locate the women who were hiding in the basement.
“I want to say [they were] like under the foundation, in a hole in the wall almost,” Seibert said. “They were buried in dirt. They’d buried themselves in dirt, that’s why they were so dirty when they came out, but it was a surrender. There was no canine bite.”
Both Skerrett and Ohler were taken into custody by U.S. Marshals. They face one charge of third-degree felony escape, to which they both have pled not guilty. Their bond was set at $150,000 apiece and will return to court on October 19.
