Pieper Lewis enjoyed a brief taste of freedom before she was captured on Tuesday afternoon.
The 18-year-old who killed her rapist in June 2020 is back in custody after she cut off her GPS ankle monitor and escaped from a women’s halfway house on Friday.
RELATED: Pieper Lewis, who was convicted of killing her rapist, escapes from prison
Lewis was booked into the Polk County Jail in Iowa and will be returned to prison. Polk County Sheriff’s Lt. Ryan Evans said she was charged Wednesday morning with prison escape, a misdemeanor punishable by up to a year in prison and a fine of $2,560, according to reports.
Lewis was only 15 when she fatally stabbed Zachary Brooks in 2020. She pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter in September and was sentenced to 20 years in prison. The prison sentence was dismissed and she was instead given 5 years probation to be served at a halfway house.
She was also ordered to pay the Brooks family $150,000 in restitution.
A GoFundMe account that raised over $560,000 to help cover her restitution has been frozen.
According to the Des Moines Register, Polk County Judge David Porter, who sentenced Lewis to probation, told her that the lenient sentence “was the second chance you asked for. You don’t get a third.”
Lewis was serving her probation sentence at the Fresh Start Women’s Center in Des Moines, Iowa when she reportedly walked away after cutting off her GPS ankle monitor just after 6 a.m. Friday.
Prosecutors have asked for her probation to be revoked and for her original sentence of 20 years to be imposed.
