DECATUR, Ga. — Three inmates — including one who was being held on a murder charge — have escaped from a county jail just east of Atlanta, authorities said.

The breakout happened early Monday morning at the DeKalb County Jail and was discovered during a routine security check, the DeKalb County Sheriff’s Office said.

“We take this breach very seriously and are working diligently to ensure these individuals are safely returned to custody as quickly as possible,” DeKalb County Sheriff Melody Maddox said in a statement. There were no immediate details about how the escape was carried out.

The men might be armed and are considered dangerous, the sheriff’s office warned.

“The public is urged to exercise extreme caution and should not approach them,” the sheriff’s office said.

The inmates range in age from 24 to 31, with the youngest one charged with murder and armed robbery. The other two inmates face charges that include armed robbery and arson.

The DeKalb County Sheriff’s Office Fugitive Unit is working with patrol officers and other law enforcement agencies in the search.

The jail is in Decatur, about 10 miles (16 kilometers) east of downtown Atlanta.

NEW YORK — A New York City high school senior was jailed Friday on a federal arson charge after authorities say he set a fire that severely burned a sleeping subway passenger.

Hiram Carrero, 18, was not required to enter a plea during his arraignment in Manhattan federal court. The fire early Monday morning is the latest in a string of incidents of people being lit ablaze on public transit across the U.S.

U.S. District Judge Valerie E. Caproni ordered Carrero detained, citing the “heinousness of the crime,” after prosecutors appealed Magistrate Judge Robert W. Lehrburger’s decision to release him to home confinement under his mother’s supervision.

“It’s hard for me to understand why an 18-year-old young man who’s in high school is out at 3 o’clock in the morning setting people on fire,” Caproni said.

Carrero is accused in a criminal complaint of igniting a piece of paper and dropping it near the 56-year-old passenger around 3 a.m. Monday on a northbound 3 train at the 34th Street—Penn Station stop near Madison Square Garden and Macy’s flagship store in midtown Manhattan.

The passenger stumbled to the platform at the next station, 42nd Street—Times Square, with his legs and torso on fire, according to surveillance images included in Carrero’s criminal complaint. Police officers quickly extinguished the flames and the passenger was taken to a hospital, where he was listed in critical condition.

“The victim very well could have died in this case,” prosecutor Cameron Molis said.

Carrero was arrested Thursday in Harlem, where his lawyer said he lives with his disabled mother and acts as her primary caregiver, bringing her to medical appointments. She attended his arraignment but declined to speak to reporters.

According to the complaint, Carrero stepped onto the train only briefly, lit the fire and then fled the station while the passenger lay burning. He then took a bus home.

Carrero faces at least seven years in prison if he’s convicted. A preliminary hearing is scheduled for Jan. 4, though that will be canceled if prosecutors bring the case to a grand jury and secure an indictment by then.

Carrero’s lawyer, Jennifer Brown, said there was “no disagreement that the allegations are extremely serious.”

But, she said, Carrero is a “very young man with no (criminal) record and a mother willing to take him in.”

Before Caproni stepped in, Lehrburger had agreed to release Carrero to home confinement with electronic monitoring and a requirement that he undergo a mental health evaluation and submit to drug testing.

Caproni reversed the decision at an after-hours hearing on Friday.

Brown, attempting to convince her to uphold Carrero’s release, cited news reports that investigators had been looking into whether the passenger had lit himself on fire.

Carrero’s case went to federal court in part because it was investigated by a federal task force, the New York Arson and Explosives Task Force that is run by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives in conjunction with the city’s police and fire departments. He is not facing charges in state court.

According to the complaint, investigators zeroed in on Carrero by comparing images from the incident to body-worn camera footage recorded in October when police stopped him for riding his bicycle through a red light. Brown said he was delivering for Uber Eats at the time.

Carrero and the man investigators were searching for had the same distinctive mustache, hat with white lettering across the front, backpack and gray hooded sweatshirt in both sets of images, the complaint said.

Last month, federal prosecutors in Chicago charged a man with pouring gasoline on a woman, chased her through a train car and setting her on fire. In December 2024, a woman asleep a stopped subway train in Brooklyn was killed when a stranger set her clothing on fire.

NEW YORK — NEW YORK (AP) —

A man with a history of arrests at pro-Palestinian protests was charged Monday with setting fire to 11 New York City police vehicles last month.

Jakhi McCray, 21, of Brooklyn pleaded not guilty to arson in U.S. District Court.

A criminal complaint unsealed Monday said McCray was recorded on surveillance video scaling a fence to a private lot for reserve New York Police Department vehicles in Brooklyn’s Bushwick neighborhood shortly before 1 a.m. on June 12. A police officer arrived about a half hour later to find the vehicles on fire and the suspect fleeing through a hole in the fence, it said.

The complaint said a lighter and a pair of sunglasses containing McCray’s fingerprints were found at the scene, along with fire starters that had been placed under some undamaged vehicles.

Police estimated the replacement cost of the vehicles at $800,000.

McCray’s attorney, Ron Kuby, said his client, whom he described as an activist, was ordered released on the arson charge but remained in police custody on a separate misdemeanor count in Manhattan.

After the vehicles were torched, Mayor Eric Adams suggested the suspect was connected to protests in Los Angeles, New York and elsewhere over the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement agenda.

“Setting police vehicles ablaze is not a form of protest — it is a federal crime,” Joseph Nocella Jr., U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of New York, said in a news release Monday.

LONDON — A third man was arrested Monday for a series of fires that targeted property linked to U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer, police said.

The unnamed 34-year-old was arrested in Chelsea, west London, on suspicion of conspiracy to commit arson with intent to endanger life, Metropolitan Police said.

A 26-year-old man was arrested on the same charge Saturday, the day after Roman Lavrynovych, a Ukrainian national, appeared in court on charges of setting fire to Starmer’s personal home, along with a property where he once lived and a small SUV he had sold.

Police didn’t provide the nationality of the second and third suspects.

No injuries were reported from the fires, which occurred on three nights in north London between May 8 and May 12.

Lavrynovych, 21, didn’t enter a plea Friday in Westminster Magistrates’ Court to three counts of arson with intent to endanger life.

A prosecutor said there was no explanation for the crimes and that Lavrynovych denied setting the fires.

Starmer and his family had moved into the prime minister’s official Downing Street residence after he was elected in July.