A school district north of the last sighting of fugitive Danelo Cavalcante opened Monday with an “increased security presence” as the search for the escaped murderer closed in on two weeks.

Owen J. Roberts School District Superintendent Will Stout wrote in a message to parents on the Pottstown district’s Facebook page that law enforcement did not advise them to close school, saying “there is no reason to believe that the fugitive poses a specific threat to our schools or students.

“We will have an increased security presence at all of our school tomorrow — including local law enforcement at each of our school locations and additional security officers,” Stout said. ” … All outdoor activities, such as physical education and recess, will be held inside during normal school hours.”

Cavalcante, who escaped the Chester County prison on August 31, was last spotted Saturday night about 10 miles from Pottstown in the Phoenixville area, 20 miles from Longwood Gardens, where the search for him has centered for the last 12 days. Cavalcante stole a delivery van from a dairy farm less than a mile from the botanical garden.

The fugitive tried to contact two former coworkers in the Phoenixville area and was seen on one of their doorbell cameras, now clean-shaven and wearing a green hoodie but still in the prison pants he was wearing when he escaped, as CrimeOnline reported. The van was found Sunday morning, abandoned in field behind a barn.

Pennsylvania State Police Lt. Col George Bivens said investigators believe he drove to northern Chester County in a van stolen from Baily’s Dairy,. The keys had been left in the van, he said.

“Our delivery van was stolen last night between 7-10PM while we were still here working,” the dairy wrote on its Facebook page Sunday morning.

Investigators determined Cavalcante was traveling in a white van after receiving the tips that he’d reached out to former coworkers, Bivens said, and had determined where the van came from by about 5 a.m.

Shortly before 10 p.m., Cavalcante rang the doorbell of a former coworker from years earlier in East Pikeland Township, Bivens said. That person was out to dinner with his family and did not respond but provided police with images from his doorbell camera when he returned home at about 12:30 a.m.

Some 15 minutes after he was at that house, he was at the home of another former coworker, who was also not present. Police were called about that sighting by the friend of a woman who lived a the house.

Bivens said that Cavalcante was spotted elsewhere in the Phoenixville area on Sunday, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported.

Police found the dairy van in a field behind a East Nantmeal Township barn just after 10:30 a.m. Sunday,

“No perimeter is 100 percent secure … I wish he had not been able to slip through that,” he said. “That does happen sometimes. … It’s not for a lack of trying that this occurred.”

State police said late Sunday morning in a Faceook post that “investigative leads have emerged that indicate Cavalcante is no longer in [the Phoenixville] area,” although they did not say how he was traveling or in which direction he might be going.

“I do believe he remains in Pennsylvania,” Bivens told reporters. “The victim’s family remains under police protection.”

Bivens said Sunday that Cavalcante’s sister, Eleni Cavalcante, had been arrested by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement and now faces deportation, the Inquirer said. He said she had “some immigration issues” but did not say if police believe she had been helping her brother.

He did say that anyone found to be assisting the fugitive will be prosecuted to the fullest extent possible.

Cavalcante, 34, crabwalked up a wall in the exercise yard of Chester County Prison on August 31 and escaped. He was awaiting transfer to a state prison after being sentenced to life in prison for the murder of his ex-girlfriend, Deborah Brandao, in 2021. Investigators say he killed her because he feared she would tell authorities that he was wanted for a 2017 murder in his native Brazil.

He is five feet tall, weighs 120 pounds, and speaks Portuguese, Spanish and some English.

Anyone with information is asked to call 911 or the police tip line at 717-562-2987. There is a $20,000 reward for any information that leads to Cavalcante’s capture.

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[Featured image: Danelo Cavalcante/Pennsylvania State Police]