The Coupeville Elementary School was locked down Thursday after a suspect jumped out of a deputy’s patrol car.

A deputy found the man hiding in bushes a short time later and re-arrested him with the help of some pepper spray, according to Detective Ed Wallace with the Island County Sheriff’s Office.

The suspect, 31-year-old Genio Fernandez-Despain, was wanted on a $10,000 warrant out of Island County Superior Court. He was also wanted on five misdemeanor warrants in Oak Harbor police and Washington State Patrol cases, according to the detective.

A deputy with the Island County Sheriff’s Office caught up with Fernandez-Despain in Oak Harbor Thursday and arrested him. Fernandez-Despain was in the back of a patrol car on the way to the jail in Coupeville when he started to act like he was hyperventilating. The deputy agreed to roll down the back window to give him some air.

Fernandez-Despain, however, managed to slip one hand out of the handcuffs, reached his hand through the bars on the open window and opened the car door from the outside handle, Wallace explained. He jumped out of the car on Main Street in front of WhidbeyHealth Medical Center and ran with one hand still in handcuffs.

Detectives and officers from the nearby Sheriff’s Office and the Coupeville Marshal’s Office responded to look for the suspect.

“He chose basically to jump out where we are all in the neighborhood,” Wallace said, referring to the concentration of law enforcement in Coupeville.

The deputy who had been driving Fernandez-Despain to jail found him hiding in bushes and arrested him. The suspect was not injured but was evaluated at the hospital for pepper spray in his eyes.

Fernandez-Despain’s escape only lasted about five minutes, Wallace said.

The Coupeville School District was immediately contacted and the nearby elementary school was placed on lockdown. The hospital also went on lockdown for five to ten minutes, according to a hospital official.

Fernandez-Despain is now facing a new charge of escape in the second degree.

Court documents indicate that Fernandez-Despain previously tried to run from law enforcement without luck.

In October 2019, a deputy clocked a sedan traveling on Highway 20 at more than 70 mph. He pursued the car onto Libbey Road and then Skymeadow Drive. The car turned onto a dead end road, went down a driveway and into the backyard of a house, over a septic tank and into brush. Fernandez-Despain allegedly got out and ran into the brush, the police report indicates. A deputy later arrested Fernandez-Despain, who appeared to have cuts and scrapes from running through blackberry bushes.

Prosecutors charged him with attempting to elude a pursuing police vehicle, hit and run and driving while license suspended.

Former Island County Superior Court Judge Alan Hancock issued a $25,000 bench warrant on Fernandez-Despain after he didn’t show for a hearing Feb. 24, 2020. The order was quashed June 7, 2021. Two weeks later, Judge Carolyn Cliff ordered a $10,000 bench warrant after he didn’t show for another hearing.