The force searching for Danelo Cavalcante reached its highest point Friday, after latest sightings

The search for escaped Chester County inmate Danelo Cavalcante grew significantly on its ninth day Friday, as Pennsylvania State Police officials boosted the force searching for him to its largest size since he fled from custody on Aug. 31.

Close to 400 officers from local, state, and federal agencies were focusing on a roughly 8-square-mile stretch of woods near Longwood Gardens in Kennett Square, according to State Police Lt. Col. George Bivens. Cavalcante was last seen in the vicinity of the gardens around noon Thursday, and a trail camera on Longwood’s property recorded him late Wednesday evening, Bivens said a news briefing Friday morning at the fire station.

» READ MORE: Live updates on the search for Danelo Cavalcante

Meanwhile, a guard at the prison who was on duty during Cavalcante’s escape and didn’t see him climb up onto the roof was fired late Thursday, according to a source at the prison who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to discuss the investigation. The officer, whose name was not immediately available, had worked at the prison for 20 years, according to the source.

The video footage of Cavalcante on the Longwood Gardens trail Wednesday night wasn’t discovered until nearly 24 hours later, causing a brief surge of officers to the area around Longwood Thursday night. As law enforcement looked for signs of Cavalcante, the search area perimeter shifted slightly westward in an attempt to keep him contained, according to Bivens.

“He’ll make a mistake. He’ll become more desperate,” Bivens said. “And he’ll have to expose himself.”

Cavalcante, 34, escaped from the county prison on Aug. 31 by scaling a wall in one of the facility’s exercise yards. He was sentenced a week earlier to life in prison for murdering his ex-girlfriend, Deborah Brandao, in front of her children in 2021.

Acting Warden Howard Holland told reporters this week that the officer on duty in the tower during the escape had been placed on administrative leave amid an investigation by the state Attorney General’s Office.

In the aftermath of Cavalcante’s escape, prison administrators searched the tower officer and found that he was carrying his personal cell phone in violation of regulations at the prison, the source said Friday.

As the search for the escaped fugitive increased Friday, Bivens said he planned on “pushing” the search perimeter, using air support, mounted patrols, and other resources to aid the officers on the ground. The commander said he believed that the search had successfully contained Cavalcante to the area around Longwood, but couldn’t speculate as to why the fugitive remained in the area.

» READ MORE: Chester County Prison fugitive escaped using similar method as an inmate who fled in May, source says

The sightings late Wednesday and Thursday afternoon brought to four the number of times Cavalcante had been seen around Longwood, Bivens said.

The delay in discovering Wednesday’s footage was due to the nature of trail cameras that spotted him: They are owned by residents assisting the state police, who are routinely checking the footage and sharing anything relevant to the search with investigators.

Those latest photos were taken about a half-mile from where another trail camera captured images of Cavalcante late Monday, according to Bivens.

Bivens provided the media with an extended tour Friday of the search command center, located in the Po-Mar-Lin Fire Company in Unionville. The atmosphere was tense.

Officers were stationed at rows of computers, pouring over maps of Chester County and monitoring phone lines while boxes of empty doughnuts and bags of Propel hydration packs were strewn nearby.

None of their maps, however, rivaled the size of the interactive screen at the front of the room. It’s one of the manhunt’s main tools, according to Bivens, projecting in real time the location of each police car stationed in the search area. Officers stationed there also have access to live video feeds from helicopters patrolling the area, and can use their mapping software to better dispatch officers on the ground.

The command center receives multiple tip calls from residents per day, Bivens said — as many as 20 on one occasion. Other residents have handed over doorbell and security camera footage, in hopes of assisting the team.

Bivens noted that Cavalcante, a native Brazilian, has some experience living in the wilderness. Cavalcante fled to the rain forest after he allegedly shot a man to death in 2017 in Tocantins, a northern state in his home country. There was some speculation that Cavalcante, who previously was a farmer in Brazil, was living off the land near Longwood, foraging for food and water.

The search after the 2017 murder, Bivens said, was not as intense as the current effort. Cavalcante was able to outlast his pursuers and escape, eventually entering America illegally after traveling to Puerto Rico.

Bivens promised a different outcome for the current search in Chester County.

“I will keep up this search, at whatever tempo, for as long as we need to do it,” he said.