Children help catch runaway prisoner

Press, 1 December 1978, Page 1

Children help catch runaway prisoner

PA Dunedin A posse of children helped to round up a fugitive prisoner yesterday. The fleeing man, with a police constable in hot pursuit, had the misfortune to run into Reid Park primary school grounds, in Mosgiel. The chase was on. A dozen pupils, two of them on bicycles, took off after him, and tenaciously clung to the scent for nearly I.skm. When the fugitive hesitated to climb a fence into a private property, the schoolchildren began to pelt him with clods. He finally dashed into an outbuilding at the back of a

property. • ■' While the woman of the house pointed out his hiding place to the constable, the schoolchildren surrounded the property and waited. But the man had had enough of the “fox and hounds” chase. He was handcuffed without resistance and led to a waiting patrol car about 30 minutes after his escape from custody at Dunedin Airport.

The chase had begun at the airport when one of two prisoners being escorted to Invercargill from New Plymouth — where they gave evidence in the ■ Supreme Court — bolted out of the Dunedin terminal during a stop about midday. He hailed a taxi, but left the driver in the lurch at Peter Johnstone Park, Mosgiel, without paying his fare. Seven police cars were called. Constable Paul Burns spotted the escaper and gave chase on foot. Then the schoolchildren joined in, and the prisoner was nabbed.

Later he came up in the Dunedin Children and Young Persons Court, charged with escaping from lawful custody, and was admonished. He was discharged but into police custody. Senior-Sergeant Brian Seymour was full of praise for the help given to the police by the schoolchildren.

The principal of Reid Park School (Mr D. A. Knudson) said that after staff had been alerted to the chase, the teachers had had to prevent several other enthusiastic children from joining in the hunt on their bicycles.