DURANT — A former jailer accused of allowing a prisoner to get drunk and walk out of jail was sentenced this week.

Thomas Charles Williams III, 23, Wapanucka, pleaded no contest to permitting escape and bringing contraband into a jail. He was sentence to five years in prison with three of those years suspended.

Williams, who was a confinement officer at the auxiliary jail on South Fifth Avenue, was charged in August 2007 after inmate Andrew McCartney walked out of the facility and took the keys with him, according to the sheriff’s office.

McCartney was captured two days later without incident.

An affidavit by Sheriff’s Investigator John Bates states that Williams admitted to allowing the inmate into the control area. Williams said he then went to the bathroom and when he returned, another prisoner informed him that McCartney walked out the entry/exit door, taking the keys with him.

According to the affidavit, Williams also supplied McCartney and other prisoners with a two-liter bottle that contained a mixture of alcohol and soda. Other prisoners disclosed that they got drunk after consuming the beverage.

The jails had technically been under the control of the Jail Trust Authority during the time of the escape. The authority voted to dissolve itself earlier that month and the sheriff formally took over the jails later that year after the governor signed paperwork.

McCartney is facing an escape charge from the incident. He also has criminal cases in other counties, according to the sheriff’s office.