A Eudora man who escaped from the Douglas County Jail nearly a month ago was arrested Friday night in Oklahoma.

Vernon D. Folks, 29, the first inmate to escape from the 2-year-old jail, is being held in Checotah (Okla.) City Jail awaiting an extradition hearing early next week, Douglas County Sheriff’s Lt. Kathy Tate said.

Police in Checotah, Okla., about 20 miles south of Muskogee, arrested Folks without incident at 7:18 p.m. Friday during a routine car stop, Tate said.

Tate said she didn’t know whether Folks had friends or family in Checotah.

“I don’t know why he was there,” she said.

Folks has a history of running from the law. When he escaped on April 13, he was serving a combined six-month sentence for convictions in Douglas County Court on misdemeanor charges of fleeing and eluding police and battery.

The Sheriff’s Office has indicated a failure to adhere to proper security procedures allowed Folks to escape from the jail, located south of Kansas Highway 10 off Franklin Road.

Folks left the jail shortly before 8 a.m. through a remote-controlled door used by inmates in the work-release program.

Folks was in the program but wasn’t supposed to leave when he did. He went out ahead of another inmate getting ready to leave.

A former jailer has been critical of what he called “lax security” at the jail for more than a year prior to the escape, but Sheriff Rick Trapp has insisted that it was an “isolated set of circumstances” that won’t be repeated.