US man who fled jail and pleaded to Trump and Kim Kardashian gets 60-year term | US crime
A man who joined nine others in fleeing a New Orleans prison — then publicly asked Donald Trump for help; the rapper the president pardoned and reality TV star Kim Kardashian while on the run — were recently sentenced to 60 years in prison for kidnapping and raping his ex-girlfriend.
Antoine Massey, 32, received his sentence Thursday at a suburban New Orleans courthouse, months after his escape-related capture and subsequent conviction during a trial on earlier charges.
The May 16, 2025, escape from a New Orleans prison, in which Massey participated, is one of the largest in recent U.S. history. Authorities said the men opened the door to a faulty cell inside the lockup, slipped through a hole behind a toilet, scaled a barbed wire fence and fled into the dark – all the while taunting officials with scribbled messages, including a misspelled one reading “To Easy.”
Eight of the escaped men were returned to custody when Massey filmed videos that he posted on social media in which he implored Trump and Kardashian – among others – to come to his aid.
“Please, I’m asking for help,” Massey said in one of the videos, which went viral on the Internet. “When I return to detention, I ask you all to come and help me.”
Others that Massey named in his plea were rappers Lil Wayne and NBA YoungBoy, from New Orleans and nearby Baton Rouge, Louisiana, respectively.
NBA YoungBoy, whose legal name is Kentrell Gaulden and who was sentenced to two years in prison on federal weapons charges, is one of several celebrities Trump pardoned during his second presidency. But Trump’s pardon powers do not extend to the state charges that Massey was then grappling with.
Police finally captured Massey in late June at a home in New Orleans, about 2 miles from where the jailbreak took place.
The last of the men who escaped was arrested in Atlanta in October. In November, Massey went before a jury in Covington, La., north of New Orleans, on prior charges of second-degree rape, second-degree kidnapping, domestic violence involving strangulation and violation of a protection order.
The charges dated back to November 2024, when it was established that Massey had beaten and sexually assaulted his girlfriend in Slidell, relatively close to Covington. Prosecutors said his victim managed to escape and ask a stranger in New Orleans for help in contacting police, leading to his detention at the facility where the escape would later take place.
The jurors returned a guilty verdict against him. The sentence imposed on him Thursday does not offer him any possibility of parole.
“It was… brutal and extreme violence,” Judge Alan Black told Massey.
Massey has pleaded not guilty to any crimes related to the New Orleans jailbreak. In his viral videos, he claimed to have been “taken out” of the dungeon.
He also faces several other charges in unrelated cases.
