The Jefferson County Sheriff’s office resorted to making a police radio broadcast Wednesday night to squelch false rumors about a manhunt for escaped prisoners.

Some residents, mostly in the Meridan area, called emergency dispatchers inquiring about the bogus escapees, Undersheriff Jeff Herrig said.

Herrig said he thinks something an officer said over the radio may have caused people at home listening to police scanners to jump to the wrong conclusions.

“We had dispatch tone it out to all the officers and everybody out there with scanners that there were no inmates running loose and never had been,” Herrig said.

What did happen was that a van from another jurisdiction slid into a ditch while taking some juveniles to the Atchison Juvenile Correctional Center, Herrig said.

No one was injured in the accident, but a second van was called to take the juveniles on to Atchison, he said.

When the second van was leaving a sheriff’s officer reported over the radio that the “inmates were in the van and on the road again,” Herrig said.

About that time, officers were working an accident on a portion of Kansas Highway 92. Part of the highway was closed while road crews cleaned up the debris, Herrig said. He speculated radio talk about that may have fueled the escapee rumors.

“There isn’t any other way those rumors could have gotten started,” he said.