NEW ROADS - Three Pointe Coupee Sheriff's Office employees were placed on leave without pay amid an investigation into how an inmate escaped the parish detention center. 

Crystal Palermo, 42, was arrested for drug charges but escaped from the detention center following her arrest on April 13. She was reportedly only on the run for a couple of hours before she was taken back into custody. 

Sheriff Rene Thibodeaux said that as of Wednesday, the investigation into Palermo's escape was complete. 

Three employees - a sergeant, a corporal, and a deputy - were found to be at fault for not properly following procedures.

"At a jail, there are many policies and procedures, and that is why a person has to be very aware of their surroundings," Thibodeaux said.

"I think it's going to open eyes to every one of the employees to say, this could've been a really bad situation, and that these people got in a lot of trouble, so yeah, I hope this opens eyes to everybody," he said.

Thibodeaux would not go into details on the escape because it's a security issue, but he says it was human error.

"It seems that most of the people there at the time were complacent, and did not follow the policy and procedure we are talking about, the rank all the way up to a sergeant, that shouldn't happen," he said.

Those three employees were placed on leave without pay and have since been suspended. They will undergo training on the policies and procedures to prevent this from happening again, Thibodeaux said. The three were not identified.