Inmate suspected of homicide escapes from a Pennsylvania jail using bed sheets

Authorities were searching Saturday for an inmate described by police as “very dangerous” who escaped from a jail in northwestern Pennsylvania using bed sheets, officials said.

Michael Burham was last seen wearing a blue denim coat from the jail, white and orange pants, and orange shoes, Warren police said Friday.

Burham was being held on arson and burglary charges and was a suspect in a homicide investigation, police said. He was also associated with a prior carjacking and kidnapping of a local couple, police said.

“He is considered very dangerous, and the public is asked to be vigilant and report anything out of the ordinary,” police said in a Facebook post.

Officials say he escaped by climbing on exercise equipment and using bed sheets tied together.

Two decades ago on the opposite side of the commonwealth, an inmate being held on murder charges after bodies were unearthed on his Wilkes-Barre property took advantage of a botched repair job and used a rope fashioned from bed sheets to shimmy down from a seventh-floor cell in the Luzerne County prison. Officials said a window repaired after a 1989 escape attempt had two panes that were too small and secured only with caulking, so they were easily broken out.

Hugo Selenski spent three days on the lam after the October 2003 escape before turning himself in. Another inmate was injured in a fall during the escape attempt and was recaptured. Selenski beat two murder charges in a 2006 trial but was convicted of two murders in 2015 and was sentenced to life in prison without possibility of parole.