Hernandez

A man who spent more than nine hours in a drainage pipe Tuesday was in jail Wednesday on a charge of evading arrest.

Pablo Hernandez, who told police he was 24, was in custody at the Denton County Jail, after being released from Denton Regional Medical Center on Wednesday morning.

His bail was set at $20,000.

Police said Hernandez was found in a vacant house in the 500 block of South Bell Avenue at about 9:25 a.m. Tuesday.

When the owner of the vacant house and a police officer searched the outside of the property, they saw a man running through yards near the Bell Avenue and Robertson Street intersection.

The man ran for several blocks before he ran down a drainage canal and crawled into a drainage pipe that was about 24 inches in diameter.

Hernandez, who doesn’t speak English, said through a Spanish speaker Wednesday that he crawled into the pipe because he knew the police wouldn’t come in after him. He is afraid of police officers, he said.

The 5-foot-4, 120-pound Hernandez said his plan was to stay until it got dark and then flee in the middle of the night.

Hernandez is no stranger to Denton police. He has been arrested multiple times in the city, and, just since November, has been convicted of marijuana possession and evading arrest.

Police officers waited Tuesday for Hernandez to come out of the pipe but eventually called in a drainage expert.

The fire department also was called in to attempt a specialized rescue in a confined space but it was unsuccessful.

Firefighters pumped fresh air into the pipe as the temperatures climbed into the 90s and fears rose of heat exhaustion or poisoning from hydrogen sulfide gas fumes from nearby sewage pipes.

City drainage workers used small robotic cameras that they dropped into the pipe to locate the man. At about 6 p.m. the cameras spotted the man’s feet.

Workers had to dig up the street to rescue Hernandez, who had been in the pipe for more than nine hours. He was hospitalized overnight and released to the police.

Denton police spokesman Jim Bryan said the stunt held up a lot of people for the day, but police do not plan to go after any money the city spent trying to catch the man.

“Our response was it really didn’t make any difference how much it cost,” Bryan said. “You can’t put a value on a human life.”

MONTY MILLER JR. can be reached at 940-566-6875. His e-mail address is mwmiller@dentonrc.com.