A PRISONER ESCAPES.

West Coast Times, 17 March 1910, Page 1

A PRISONER ESCAPES.

JUMPS THE GAOL WALL. AND ESCAPES ~ON A BICYCLE

PALMERSTON N., March 13. Something of a sensation was caused

in Palmerston when it became known that a prisoner named Joseph Powelka, who last Monday had been committed for trial on charges of stripping a number of houses of furniture and entering and breaking, had escaped from custody. It appears that he had been in the Palmerston cells all the week pending further charges, which were to have been heard against him to-

morrow. During the week he had complained of feeling unwell, but the gaoler had an idea that it was a case of malingering, and kept a very sharp eye on him. Shortly after midday yesterday he asked to be allowed out in

the yard, and to this the gaoler consented. He opened the cell door, Powelka came out, and the gaoler left him for a. moment to call a constable. In this brief time, however, Powelka

placed a bucket upside down, aganist the yard wall, and jumped over it. He is a very tall man, something over six feet, and had no difficulty in getting over the ten-foot wall. Ho dropped into the right-of-way behind the premises of the U.F.C.A., where a bicycle belonging to Mr Prank Kendall, an employee of the U.F.C.A., was standing against the fence. This Powelka commandeered, and made such good use of Ids start that the police, up to the present time, have not captured him. A large number of police immediately scoured the country in a vain endeavour to get on his tracks.-

Powelka’s father lives in the Kimbolton district, and Ids wife resides at Ashhurst, and it was thought that he would make for one of these places. As it happened, this surmise proved correct, and a little after midnight last night Mr Boss, storekeeper, was aroused from bed by a man, and from the description given by Mr Boss, he could have been no other than Powelka. The man bought some biscuits and lemonade,for which he. tendered a onepound note in payment, so that he has made a rise somewhere. He also borrowed some carbide from Mr Boss to replenish a large acetylene bicycle lamp. There was neither bracket nor lamp on Mr Kendall’s bicycle, which. Powelka stole, and Mr Boss noticed that the lamp which Powelka had was tied on with string. When ho got away from the police station he had no hat, but at Bunnythorpe he wore a brown slouch, one, which he kept well pulled down over his face. Mr Boss questioned him if he had heard or seen anything of the man who had escaped from the gaol at Palmerston, but he evaded the' questions, and said he must get away, stating that ho was going to Feildiug. Fears were entertain ed for the safety of Powclka’s wife, while he is at large, as he is known to have threatened her on several occasions, and he'may he looked upon now as a very desperate man.