Police in Japan hunt prison escapee

The daring jailbreak of a dangerous criminal has sparked an intense manhunt in a southern Japanese city and prompted schools to advise children to travel in supervised groups until he is caught.

Hiroshima Prefectural Police said they are scouring the city for the convict, who shot at an officer and stole a squad car in 2005.

Nearly 800 police were assigned to the manhunt, guarding train stations and searching parks with dogs. The board of education warned students to travel in groups to and from schools for safety.

Li Guolin, a Chinese national, escaped from a Hiroshima prison yesterday by reportedly ducking out of an outdoor exercise session and scaling two walls. He was serving a 23-year sentence.

He escaped in his white, prison-issued winter underwear.

Police are scouring train stations, bus depots and parks across Hiroshima city, and officers distributed Li’s mugshot door-to-door and posted his description on the internet.

The escape yesterday was the first ever from the Hiroshima prison, said a penitentiary official.

Tadaaki Nakagawa, a corrections official with the Justice Ministry, said the last escape by an inmate from a Japanese prison was in 1989.

Li, believed to be the leader of a gang of armed robbers, was sent to the Hiroshima prison in 2008, and was serving a 23-year sentence for attempted murder and other crimes.

Japanese media reported that he climbed over a wall inside the prison campus and then used scaffolding to get over the 16ft outer wall, which was under construction for repairs. Sensors on the wall were turned off because of the repair work.