After being sentenced to life for the murder of his ex-girlfriend, Danelo Cavalcante, 34, escaped from a prison in Pennsylvania on Thursday, Aug. 31, 2023. Fourteen days after his escape, the manhunt ended, and he was found and in custody of the police, according to CNN.
In 2020, Cavalcante’s ex-girlfriend, Deborah Brandao, filed a protection of abuse against him and in April 2021, Cavalcante was convicted of first-degree murder after he stabbed his ex-girlfriend, in front of her two young children. He is also accused for a separate murder which occured in Brazil in 2017 before coming to the United States, according to CBS news.
On Aug.16, 2023, Cavalcante was sentenced to life without the possibility of parole. Two weeks later, he was able to crab-walk up a wall at Chester County Prison and “ran across a roof, scaled a fence and pushed his way through razor-wire to escape,” according to Howard Holland, the acting warden at Chester County Prison.
“It made me wonder how bad the prison security was that he was pretty much able to climb a wall and hop out,” Raina Patel ‘25 said.
After his escape, he was first sighted the next day on Friday, Sept. 1 inside a house not far from the prison. According to the homeowner, Ryan Drummond, Cavalcante was inside his kitchen late at night and after telling his wife to call the police, Cavalcante walked in a calm manner out of the house.
Police created a perimeter, which surrounded Longwood Gardens. Cavalcante was spotted numerous times within this perimeter, but on Sept. 9, he was able to slip past the perimeter and steal a van from a dairy farm less than a mile away. He then tried to reach a former acquaintance through his ring camera, which captured his new, clean shaven appearance on camera.
On Sept. 11, Cavalcante stole a .22 caliber rifle from a homeowner who filed a pistol at Cavalcante as he left the house. On the morning of Sept. 13, Cavalcante was captured. He was found under a pile of logs behind a John Deere store, according to ABC news. A K-9, named Yoda, bit Cavalcante as he tried to crawl away from the police, which slowed him down. This allowed for the police to arrest him after a 14 day long manhunt, which involved over 500 police officers.
Cavalcante will now be transferred to a high security state prison to serve the rest of his life-long sentence in Pennsylvania.