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A man who joined nine others in fleeing a New Orleans jail – then publicly pleaded for help from Donald Trump; a rapper whom the president pardoned and reality TV star Kim Kardashian while on the run – recently got a 60-year prison sentence for kidnapping and raping his ex-girlfriend.
Antoine Massey, 32, received his punishment on Thursday at a suburban New Orleans state courthouse, months after his jailbreak-related capture and subsequent conviction at trial of prior charges.
The 16 May 2025 breakout from a New Orleans jail that Massey had a hand in is one of the largest in recent US history. Authorities said the men yanked open a faulty cell door inside the lockup, squeezed through a hole behind a toilet, scaled a barbed-wire fence and fled into the dark – all while taunting officials with scrawled messages, including a misspelled one reading, “To Easy”.
Eight of the escaped men had been retaken into custody when Massey filmed videos that he released on social media in which he pleaded for Trump and Kardashian – among others – to come to his aid.
“Please, I’m asking for help,” Massey said in one of the videos, which achieved internet virality. “When I get back in custody, I’m asking y’all please to come and help.”
Others whom Massey named in his entreaty were rappers Lil Wayne and NBA YoungBoy, who are from New Orleans and nearby Baton Rouge, Louisiana, respectively.
NBA YoungBoy, whose legal name is Kentrell Gaulden and who had been sentenced to two years in prison on federal weapons-related charges, is among a number of celebrities whom Trump has pardoned during his second presidency. But Trump’s pardoning powers do not extend to the state charges with which Massey had been grappling then.
Police ultimately captured Massey in late June at a home in New Orleans about 2 miles (3km) from where the jailbreak occurred.
The last of the men who escaped was caught in Atlanta in October. In November, Massey went in front of a jury in Covington, Louisiana, north of New Orleans on preceding charges of second-degree rape, second-degree kidnapping, domestic abuse battery involving strangulation and violating a protective order.
The charges dated back to November 2024, when Massey was found to have beaten and sexually assaulted his girlfriend in Slidell, which is relatively near Covington. Prosecutors said his victim managed to escape and get a stranger in New Orleans to help her contact police, leading to his detention at in the facility where the breakout would later take place.
Jurors returned a guilty verdict against him. The sentence imposed on him Thursday does not afford him any possibility of parole.
“This … was brutal and extreme violence,” judge Alan Black said to Massey.
Massey has pleaded not guilty of any crime in connection with the New Orleans jailbreak. In his viral videos, he claimed to have been “let out” of the lockup.
He also faces several other charges in unrelated cases.
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Guardian reporting partner WWL Louisiana contributed
