During the search to find escaped murder suspect Rafael McCloud, law enforcement have been hindered by groups of teenagers.

Two 17-year-old juveniles and two 18-year-old women were found trespassing at Kuhn Memorial Hospital Tuesday and were arrested, Sheriff Martin Pace said.

“That pulled resources unnecessarily off of our manhunt just to find four teenagers,” Pace said.

Around 12:30 p.m. Tuesday, Deputy Sheriffs Connie Ricketts and Morris Lovette saw a grey Nissan Cube with a Rankin County license plate parked beside the old hospital building and called in more law enforcement to investigate. Rankin County police were contacted and were unaware of any incident involving the vehicle or its owner.

“It was unclear why the vehicle was there,” Pace said.

Members of the Vicksburg Police Department and Warren County Sheriff’s Office made a perimeter around the building as Lt. Randy Lewis, Sheriff Martin Pace, Undersheriff Jeff Riggs and Investigator Sam Winchester searched the building.

The two juveniles and two women were found together on the third floor of the dilapidated hospital with baseball bats, he said.

“All were arrested for trespassing,” Pace said.

The juveniles were charged with trespassing, and the women were charged with trespassing and contributing to the delinquency of a minor, he said.

Later Tuesday afternoon Pace saw a pickup truck drive up to the hospital grounds and five young men from Madison, a combination of juveniles and adults, exited the vehicle. The group said they came to the hospital to take pictures, he said. Since the group did not enter the building, Pace said they were dismissed.

“We got all their information, took a police report and released them on a warning and put them on the road because they did not actually go inside the building,” Pace said.

He is concerned about the safety of people entering any condemned building because generally those vacant buildings are not safe structurally at any time.

“None of these vacant buildings are places that anybody needs to be hanging out, but certainly not that one,” Pace said.

He hopes people will use common sense and avoid areas with no trespassing signs, especially with the search for the fugitive continuing