2 Beaufort Co. women arrested for ‘harboring’ fugitive who escaped from nearby jail

Evan McKenna
·2 min read

State agents have jailed two Port Royal women for allegedly helping an inmate hide from police after he escaped from the Jasper County Detention Center in early June.

Kalynn Jade Cloud, 21, and Amani Nekwan Vaughn, 30, were charged Thursday morning with harboring an escaped convict, a felony punishable by up to 10 years in prison. That convict was Cloud’s brother, 29-year-old Jaquan Duvall Barnes, an official confirmed with The Island Packet and Beaufort Gazette. Each women’s home address matches one of Barnes’ two addresses listed in public records.

Barnes escaped the detention center in Jasper County between June 9 and 10 “with the use of tools and a prior arranged escape plan,” according to his arrest warrants from the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division. He was in jail at the time for a pending charge of child sex trafficking, stemming from an arrest in early March in which Hardeeville officers allegedly pulled over his vehicle to find an underage girl who had been reported missing from Beaufort County.

As of Thursday, it was unclear how and for how long Cloud and Vaughn allegedly assisted Barnes in evading police. The fugitive was captured during a traffic stop in Jacksonville, Florida on July 8 and was extradited July 12 to the Beaufort County Detention Center, records show.

SLED affidavits released earlier this week connect Barnes to an alleged local sex trafficking ring in residences north of the Broad River, making him the fifth Beaufort County man to face a trafficking charge in connection with the quickly growing case.

In 2015, Barnes pleaded guilty in Beaufort County court to two counts of third-degree sexual exploitation of a minor, landing him on South Carolina’s state sex offender registry.

A spokesperson for SLED could not immediately answer additional questions Thursday.

Barnes was the first of two inmates to escape law enforcement custody in Jasper County in less than a month. In late June, 23-year-old Jashaun Heyward slipped away from deputies’ grasp while being led out of a bond revocation hearing at the county courthouse. He surrendered to police July 9, the day after Barnes was apprehended in Florida.

Cloud and Vaughn remained in custody at the Beaufort County Detention Center as of Thursday afternoon.