Prisoner escape from hospital

GARDAÍ were last night searching for a prisoner who jumped out of the third floor window of a Dublin hospital where he was being treated.

Prison officers yesterday called for secure areas in hospitals for convicts after the man escaped through a toilet window at Dublin’s Beaumont Hospital at 10.15pm on Monday night.

Gardaí are searching for 26-year-old Thomas Connors who is serving an eight-year sentence in Wheatfield Prison for dangerous driving causing death. He was due for release in 2006.

The Dubliner is 6ft tall with red hair and of stocky build. He was wearing maroon pyjamas when he got away.

The prisoner had asked to go to the toilet and the chain between him and a prison officer was removed.

Eugene Dennehy of the Prison Officers’ Association said: “This clearly shows the inadequacies of trying to deal with people in custody in an ordinary hospital environment without any of the security measures that exist in prison.”

Mr Dennehy said prison officers had to cope with a very tricky situation in hospitals.

“They say they want to use the toilet but you can’t go into the cubicle with them. There’s no security on the window.

"He decides to jump from three floors up. It’s an impossible situation and environment for prison officers,” he said.

He said escorts also posed difficulty, and danger, to hospital staff, other patients and visitors.

“You could have a situation, like in Tallaght hospital, where things go wrong or turn nasty and impinge on the safety of prison staff and the public,” he said.

Last June, a gun was put to the head of a prison officer during an armed raid on Tallaght Hospital’s A&E in a bid to free a remand prisoner.

Mr Dennehy stressed that the small number of escapes must be put in the context of several hundred escorts to hospitals.

He said the POA had for years been calling for secure areas within hospitals to treat prisoners. Labour Party’s justice spokesman Joe Costello asked justice minister Michael McDowell to investigate the circumstances of the escape.

Yesterday he asked the minister to report to the Dáil on the matter.

“I’m asking him to explain the circumstances surrounding the escape of the prisoner, how often it has happened and what precautions have been taken to prevent it happening again,” Mr Costello said.

The Prison Service is investigating the escape.

Prison authorities pointed out between 12,000 and 14,000 people go through prisons every year and that there were around 500 prisoner movements every day.