Escaper still at large after five months

Press, 21 October 1983, Page 5

Escaper still at large after five months

By

PETER COMER,

police reporter

Kevin Anthony Allan Lofthouse “thinks life is a party,” according to a Christchurch policeman who has had dealings with him. It might have been less of a party had not the slightly built Scotsman escaped from Addington Prison more than five months ago while awaiting trial of the $14,000 armed robbery of the Shirley T.A.B. in April.

Lofthouse and the other man accused of the robbery, Mark Cyril Woodall, shinned up a drainpipe and scurried over a roof to freedom on May 14, while other prisoners created a diversion.

Woodall, who said he had escaped “to sort out a domestic problem,” gave himself up the next day and was later jailed for four years on charges of aggravated robbery, burgling premises at Temuka, obtaining credit by fraud at Auckland, and escaping from custody. He has lodged an appeal against the four-year sentence.

The courts have issued a warrant for Lofthouse’s arrest, but the police have no lead on him. For an escaped prisoner to be “still outstanding,” in police terminology, for more than five months is unusual in New Zealand. The Christchurch police have recaptured more than 45 escapers from penal institutions in little more than a year. Most have been back in custody within a few days, some within an hour.

The police concede that Lofthouse might have managed to flee New Zealand.

However, they believe that if he is still in the country, he has probably had to work for money somewhere during the last five months.

Had anyone who has met or worked with Lofthouse known he was an escaped prisoner, they should have had little trouble recognising him.

Soon after Lofthouse’s escape, a shop assistant who had seen his photoraph in a newspaper told the police that she had sold him a black duffel coat in a second-hand clothing store in Christchurch.

Lofthouse, is now aged 23. He is of slight build, 170 cm (sft 7in) tall, has an olive complexion, and speaks with a broad Scots accent which would be difficult to disguise, according to the police. According to a detective, Lofthouse is intelligent, with an outgoing personality “and thinks life is a party.” He was trained as a mechanic, but would probably have the ability to pass himself off as a member of a profession, the police believe. He has no tattoos. “Someone could well be working with him without having any idea who he is,” the detective said.