TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras (AP) – Honduran police recaptured a 16-year-old boy who is accused of killing a U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agent and has escaped five times in three years from a crumbling prison, an official said Sunday.

More than 1,000 officers had been hunting for Herlan Colindres, who was carrying a gun when he was caught in the capital Tegucigalpa, Security Minister Armando Calidonio said.

Colindres, a gang member implicated in 16 other killings, slipped out of a Tegucigalpa juvenile rehabilitation center Nov. 17. It was his second escape in less than four months and the fifth in three years.

Authorities were considering what to do with the boy, reluctant to send him back to a prison where bricks can easily be chipped from the walls, Calidonio said.

Colindres and his 13-year-old bodyguard were arrested in July in the killing of Michael Timothy Markey, a DEA agent who was shot to death while visiting a temple dedicated to Honduras’ patron saint outside Tegucigalpa.

On Aug. 7, Colindres weakened the metal bars of his cell with a nail file and fled, five days after vowing to reporters that he would break out and “kill all of the journalists.” He was captured the same day while hitchhiking.

After that, the government built Colindres a new brick-walled cell with a private bathroom and six guards. It remains unclear how he escaped that cell.

Colindres had been jailed previously in the killings of rival gang members, but was able to escape within days. He has denied involvement in Markey’s death.

Honduran authorities have said Markey, 44, who was based in El Paso, Texas, had been in the Central American country training police in drug interdiction efforts.

AP-ES-11-27-05 1708EST

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