Louisville Man Serving Time for a 2020 Protest-Era Carjacking Is Charged With Escaping Federal Custody
Damion Hayes, 26, is indicted on escape and gun charges after prosecutors say he fled a Louisville reentry center on April 22, 2026.
A Louisville man who was serving a federal sentence for a carjacking during the 2020 protests in the city has been indicted on charges that he escaped from a halfway house in April 2026 and that he illegally possessed a gun.
A federal grand jury in Louisville returned the indictment against Damion Hayes, 26, on Wednesday, Oct. 7, 2026, charging him with escape from federal custody and possession of a firearm by a prohibited person, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of Kentucky said. The office spells his middle name Lamont; his earlier federal court records spell it Lemont.
What the indictment alleges
According to the indictment, Hayes escaped from federal custody on or about April 22, 2026, in Jefferson County. At the time he was confined at the Dismas Charity Center Residential Reentry Center, a halfway house, under the authority of the Federal Bureau of Prisons.
The gun count says he was barred from having a firearm because of earlier felony convictions. The announcement does not say when or where he is accused of having the gun, or when he was taken back into custody.
The new indictment is case No. 3:26-cr-00147 in federal court in Louisville.
The 2020 carjacking
Hayes was 21 when U.S. District Judge David J. Hale sentenced him on Feb. 4, 2021, to 91 months in prison for his role in a carjacking during protest activity in Louisville in 2020, according to the 2021 announcement of his sentence. He admitted taking a 2017 Subaru Forester by force, violence and intimidation on June 3, 2020, in Jefferson County, and was ordered to pay $20,117.81 in restitution.
The federal docket in that case shows the 91-month term was ordered to run at the same time as sentences in two Jefferson Circuit Court cases. One day after his federal sentencing, on Feb. 5, 2021, he was convicted in state court of facilitation to murder and facilitation to first-degree robbery in one case, and of possession of a handgun by a convicted felon in the other, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
The docket also shows that in May 2024 the court entered an order reducing his sentence under Amendment 821 to the federal sentencing guidelines, a 2023 change that applied to some people already in prison. The public docket entry does not show the new length.
The penalties
If convicted on both counts, Hayes faces a combined maximum of 20 years in prison, the U.S. Attorney’s Office said. There is no parole in the federal system. The U.S. Marshals Service and the Louisville Metro Police Department investigated, and Assistant U.S. Attorney Kayla M. Campbell is prosecuting the case.
Hayes is presumed innocent of the new charges. The allegations have not been proven in court.
