A convicted murderer who escaped from a Pennsylvania prison was apprehended by police on Sept. 13 after an intense two-week manhunt through heavily wooded communities outside Philadelphia.
Danelo Cavalcante, 34, is in police custody after being the target of a search by more than 500 law enforcement officers since escaping from Chester County Prison on Aug. 31., the Pennsylvania State Police announced Wednesday.
Cavalcante was caught in South Coventry Township, a small village some 50 miles west of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania State Police Lt. Col. George Bivens said at a news briefing on Sept. 13.
He was transported to the Avondale State Police barracks, where video footage showed him exiting an armored police vehicle while handcuffed and wrapped in a foil blanket shortly before 9 a.m.
"Our nightmare is finally over, and the good guys won," Chester County District Attorney Deb Ryan said at the press conference. "We knew that it was just a matter of time."
The final hours of the search began shortly after midnight, when a burglar alarm was triggered at a home within a perimeter law enforcement had set up in northern Chester County, Bivens said at the news conference.
Cavalcante was not found at the residence. But at around 1 a.m., a fixed-wing aircraft using thermal imaging technology picked up a heat signal on the ground that police began to track, Bivens said.
A lightning storm in the area forced the aircraft to depart, but tactical teams from the Customs and Border Protection and the Pennsylvania State Police held the perimeter through the night during the storm. Shortly after 8 a.m., the teams converged on the area of the heat signal and ambushed Cavalcante, who was lying prone on the ground.
"Cavalcante did not realize he was surrounded until that had occurred," Bivens said.
Cavalcante tried to escape, crawling through thick underbrush while carrying a rifle police said he had stolen from a homeowner's garage days earlier, Bivens said.
The tactical team released a dog that subdued him, and officers moved in. Cavalcante continued to resist, but was forcibly taken into custody, Bivens said. No shots were fired.
He sustained a "minor bite wound" from the dog, Bivens said. It took around 5 minutes to apprehend Cavalcante once authorities closed in on his hiding spot, he added.
The native Brazilian was convicted of first-degree murder on Aug. 16, just 15 days before he escaped from prison. He was also wanted for a homicide in Brazil, police said.
He will ultimately be transported to a state correctional institution to serve out his sentence, Bivens said.
There had been multiple sightings of Cavalcante in the area, including by a homeowner who shot at him on Sept. 11 after finding Cavalcante stealing a rifle from his garage, police said.
He had also been spotted on a doorbell camera in nearby Phoenixville on Sept. 9 wearing a green hooded sweatshirt, police said. He also appeared to have altered his appearance by shaving off his facial hair, police said.
The manhunt for Cavalcante resulted in the closing of Longwood Gardens, a botanical garden normally open to the public, after he was seen on trail cameras on Sept. 4 and then spotted again on Sept. 7, authorities said. Two local school districts also cancelled classes for multiple days while Cavalcante was still at large.
On the day of his escape, surveillance video showed the 5-foot-tall, 120-pound inmate stretching horizontally between two walls in broad daylight and walking up to the roof in a hallway just off the exercise yard at Chester County Prison. He then managed to wriggle through barbed wire on the roof to escape, authorities said.
A guard who had worked at the prison for 18 years was fired after he did not see Cavalcante's escape, a county spokesperson said.
Cavalcante was sentenced last month to life in prison without parole for stabbing his ex-girlfriend to death in front of her children. The family of Sarah Brandão, whose sister Deborah Brandão was fatally stabbed by Cavalcante in 2021, had been under police protection with Cavalcante still at large.
The family was immediately contacted by law enforcement upon Cavalcante's capture, the Chester County district attorney said at the news conference.
"They can now finally sleep again," Ryan, the district attorney, said.