Delaware convict escapes at Philadelphia airport WILMINGTON, DEL. (AP) (wesm) - Authorities searched Tuesday for a handcuffed Delaware convict who escaped from a private security guard at Philadelphia International Airport over the weekend.

Taariq Ali, 43, was convicted of attempted murder in 1995 and was being flown back to Delaware from California, where he served part of his life sentence under a prisoner exchange program, Delaware Department of Corrections officials said.

Ali was accompanied on a commercial flight by an employee of Nashville, Tenn.-based Prisoner Transportation Services and his wrists were bound to a chain around his waist when he escaped late Friday. The company did not notify Delaware officials until Sunday.

Delaware Corrections spokesman John Painter said the department has stopped all interstate transfers of prisoners "because there's entirely too many unanswered questions about how this happened."

Company spokesman Thor Catalogne referred questions to corrections officials.

Painter said there have only been 10 such transfers since 2004, all without incident except for Friday's. The transfers are usually made because of "real or perceived security threats."

Painter said he was not aware of any other problems with the company, which the state uses because it is not authorized to move prisoners across state lines.

The company was also involved in a January 2007 escape in which an inmate later stole a tractor-trailer in an attempt to see his dying mother in Tennessee. Christopher Daniel Gay, who was among 11 prisoners being taken to jails across the Southeast, escaped during a restroom break in South Carolina.

Police said Gay stole a pickup, a country singer's tour bus and then a Wal-Mart tractor-trailer, leading police on a chase that ended with the tractor-trailer stuck in a muddy field, yards from his mother's mobile home outside Nashville.
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