A Rhode Island inmate who walked off a prison work assignment in Cranston two years ago is headed back to court records as a convicted escapee, after pleading no contest and drawing eight more years behind bars. Joshua Torres disappeared from the Adult Correctional Institutions' Central Distribution Center warehouse on Power Road on October 10, 2024, while serving time on a gun charge, and was tracked down roughly two weeks later at a motel in West Greenwich.
Torres pleaded no contest to unlawfully escaping the ACI and conspiracy earlier this month, according to court records cited by WPRI. He was sentenced to serve eight more years in prison as a result, the station reported. At the time he abandoned his post, Torres was a minimum-security inmate assigned to an outdoor job, according to WJAR.
Per NBC 10 News/WJAR, Torres pleaded no contest to charges of assault or escape by a custodial unit inmate and felony conspiracy, and Associate Justice David Cruise sentenced him to four years on each count, to run consecutively. Investigators eventually tracked Torres to a Super 8 motel in West Greenwich, where he was taken into custody about two weeks after he vanished from the warehouse, the same WPRI report noted.
A Gun Case Interrupted by a Disappearing Act
Torres was serving time for carrying a firearm without a permit and for possessing a weapon as someone who had committed a crime of violence when he abandoned his assignment, per the WPRI account. He had been due for release in March 2027 before the escape case added years to his time, WJAR reported.
Reports on Torres's age at the time of the walkaway and arrest differ. WPRI described him as 28 years old when he abandoned the job, while WJAR's coverage put his age at 26 at the time of his arrest at the motel. Neither discrepancy has been independently resolved in the available records.
A Record That Predates the Warehouse Walkaway
This was not Torres's first serious brush with the courts. He was convicted in March 2017 of burglary, first-degree robbery and conspiracy tied to a home invasion in Glocester, and received a 25-year sentence with nine years to serve, according to the same WPRI reporting on his history. A Rhode Island State Police corporal also told a judge that Torres had previously escaped the ACI in 2021, though a Rhode Island Department of Corrections spokesperson disputed that account and said there was no record of such an escape, WPRI reported.
When Torres was first arraigned on the escape charge tied to the 2024 walkaway, a judge set bail at $30,000 — ten times the standard bail guidelines, according to WPRI's earlier coverage of the arraignment. Rhode Island law addresses this kind of offense under Title 11, Chapter 25 of the state's general laws, which includes sections on assault or escape by a prisoner of a medium or minimum custodial unit and the sentencing structure for such escapes, according to the Rhode Island General Assembly.
