Escaped Killer Tells Cops How He Successfully Hid from Police, Survived in Forest
Now-captured convicted murderer Danelo Cavalcante was arrested Wednesday in Pennsylvania after two weeks on the lam following his escape from prison.
According to police, the 34-year-old was able to survive in the wilderness by eating only watermelon and drinking water from a stream.
He also planned to leave the country.
Cavalcante escaped from Chester County Prison on Aug. 31 — weeks after he was convicted of the 2021 murder of his former girlfriend, Deborah Brandão.
Brandão was stabbed dozens of times in front of her children by the illegal immigrant.
Cavalcante was sentenced to serve the rest of his life in prison, but instead attempted a daring escape.
Newly released video shows convicted murderer Danelo Cavalcante escape from the Chester County Prison exercise yard in Pennsylvania on August 31. He shimmys up the wall backwards. pic.twitter.com/Hh14NrxdiU
— Brian Entin (@BrianEntin) September 6, 2023
An exhaustive two-week manhunt for him ended thanks to a law enforcement aircraft that was outfitted with thermal imaging technology, the Associated Press reported.
Cavalcante’s heat signature was picked up and tactical teams from the Pennsylvania State Police and the U.S. Border Patrol took the situation from there.
Cavalcante was located by a police dog, bitten on the head and captured before he could harm anyone.
Yoda, a 4-year-old Belgian Malinois, bit Cavalcante on his scalp and in the “lower extremity area” to keep him down, preventing Calvacante from using the stolen rifle in his possession.
How a police dog named Yoda helped capture an escaped murderer: https://t.co/3aINOwtxjm pic.twitter.com/LcVjOuB2lV
— Yahoo News (@YahooNews) September 14, 2023
He was armed with a rifle he had stolen from a homeowner in the area of rural Chester County.
Supervisory Deputy U.S. Marshal Robert Clark told NBC News hours after the killer’s capture that Cavalcante sustained himself on stolen fruit.
“Early in the investigation he stated that he had found watermelons on a watermelon farm, and he was living off watermelon, he was drinking from the stream, he was moving at night only,” Clark told the network.
Cavalcante also hid his feces by covering them in foliage.
He used the thick brush to hide during the day and had planned to carjack someone and take their vehicle to Canada or to potentially eventually make his way to Puerto Rico, Clark also said.
“His end game was to carjack somebody, that’s why he needed to obtain a weapon, that’s why he held onto that rifle,” Clark told NBC.
Clark added, “That was his plan in the next 24 hours, so there wasn’t a better time for us to locate and apprehend him.”
The deputy marshal also said Cavalcante admitted to officers that they were close to catching him on several occasions, but that the terrain and brush concealed him.
“Ultimately, when we conducted a post-arrest interview, he admitted to those factors,” Clark told NBC.
He concluded, “There were times, at least three times, where law enforcement officers were almost stepping on him, and the area was saturated so he felt that he needed to move locations.”
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