Danelo Cavalcante arrives in Chester County court months after jail escape, recapture
KENNETT SQUARE, Pa. (CBS) -- Danelo Cavalcante once made national headlines when he evaded law enforcement for two weeks after escaping Chester County Prison not far from Philadelphia back on August 31.
On Friday, law enforcement officers transported him back to the area where he once roamed free and brought him to court for a hearing.
Cavalcante, 34, arrived at Magisterial District Court in Chester County on Friday morning around 9:30 a.m. wearing an orange prison jumpsuit.
The two-hour-plus-long preliminary hearing had nothing to do with murder charges - it was related to allegations from when he escaped the prison and eluded capture for almost two weeks before he was arrested in an area of thick brush in northern Chester County.
He arrived saying nothing - with one reporter yelling if he'd try to make an escape again.
A district judge ruled there was enough evidence to send the case to trial.
Cavalcante had already been found guilty of the murder of ex-girlfriend Deborah Brandao and was awaiting transfer to another facility when he escaped. Video showed him crab-walking up a wall out of an outdoor exercise yard and onto a roof of Chester County Prison.
Once beyond the prison walls, Cavalcante was spotted throughout the area on surveillance cameras and at one point authorities say he took a .22 caliber rifle from a homeowner.
People who work in Chester County Prison testified in the hearing Friday.
One guard said once Cavalcante was on the roof, the small amount of barbed wire up there would've done little to contain anyone.
Some neighbors, like Lindsay Yates from Unionville, attended the trial with her children because they were curious about the case that heavily impacted their lives for weeks.
"I saw him walk in and small room so, I was afraid I was going to have a heart attack," she said.
Yates said the memories from when Cavalcante was on the run are still fresh in her mind. Her family lives near Longwood Gardens, she said.
"We were nervous and the kids do home school, so you know, we were pretty much hunkered down for like the length of it. But we think, you know, the police did a really good job," Yates said
Attorneys from both sides declined to comment.
In November he was sent to SCI Greene, a state prison in Waynesburg, about 50 miles south of Pittsburgh.
Cavalcante will return to court in the upcoming weeks for a formal arraignment.
