IONIA COUNTY, Mich. — The Ionia Department of Public Safety announced Sunday that an inmate had escaped from the Ionia Correctional Facility.
Michael David Elliot, 40, is being tracked within Ionia County by state and local police with K-9 units and a chopper.
Elliot was serving a life sentence for multiple first-degree murder convictions from 1994.
Sources tell FOX 17 that they discovered a hole in a fence on the grounds of the facility at about 9:30 p.m., and believe that is how Elliot escaped.
Ionia Public Safety initially posted that two inmates had escaped the jail, but later revised that statement and said that only Elliot had escaped.
Elliot is 5 feet 8 inches tall and 165 lbs with brown hair and brown eyes.
According to public safety officials, if he is not apprehended Ionia County Pubic Schools will make a decision about whether or not to hold school Monday at approximately 5 a.m.
Anyone with information on Elliot’s whereabouts should contact Ionia Public Safety at 616-527-4431 or Silent Observer at 616-527-0107.
According to court documents Michael Elliot was convicted in the August 1993 murders of four people in Gladwin County: Vickie Currie and her boyfriend Michael Tufnell, along with his brother Bruce Tufnell and Kathy Lane.
Elliot and two brothers, Chuck and Paul Treece plus Tammy LaCross (who was 16 at the time, and the daughter of victim Vickie Currie) hatched a plan to steal drug money that Tufnell allegedly kept at a storage facility
They didn’t find the alleged drug money at the facility, so they stole guns and ammo from another storage unit, then went to Tufnell’s house to look for a safe, according to court documents.
Elliot and Chuck Treece went into the house, killed the four victims, then set the house on fire.