As most people took shelter under the security of four walls and a roof over their heads during the typhoon, four inmates of a Taitung prison opted to do the very opposite.
The four, serving sentences from 13 years to life, used the stormy weather as cover and successfully escaped late Tuesday night.
Police have launched a manhunt and prosecutors and the Ministry of Justice have begun an investigation. The ministry said yesterday that, as yet, there was no indication that the prisoners had inside help.
Minister of Justice Chen Ding-nan (
The four inmates, who fled the Taiyuan Vocational Training Institute (
According to the justice ministry, the escape was not discovered until a patrol at 11:05pm found the inmates' room empty.
The escape was estimated to have taken place some time between 10:30pm and 11:00pm.
The inmates are thought to have used a metal bar torn from a bed to break the concrete encasing the steel rebar on a window, creating a gap just wide enough for a person to get through.
"The constant howling of the wind and banging of flying objects caused by the typhoon throughout the evening was so loud that the hammering by the inmates went unheard by the prison staff," acting warden Huang Yu-ching (黃有經) said.
Attached to the window was a rope made of torn bed sheets tied together. The fugitives used the makeshift rope to descend from their cell on the second floor to the prison garden, prison officials said.
The four then ran across the garden to another area of the prison where the security level was lower; a security gate divides the two areas.
According to Huang, the gate had not been completely closed because of fears that the strong wind might damage it.
The four climbed the 2.5m prison wall -- topped by barbed wire -- by piling plastic garbage boxes on top of each other.
Taitung police, alerted the prison authorities, immediately set up roadblocks and searched for the fugitives throughout the night.
The justice minister visited the director-general of the National Police Administration, Wang Jinn-wang (王進旺), yesterday morning to ask for help in apprehending the fugitives. Wang promised that the police would do all they could.
Chen was enraged by the incident, calling it "inconceivable."
This is the third time that inmates have either escaped or tried to escape since early May.
"Three times in three months, -- these are clear signs that the management at our correctional facilities is seriously flawed," Chen said.
The Taitung District Prosecutors' Office has set up a special task force headed by the district prosecutor-general to begin to try to assign criminal blame for the escape.
The justice ministry has also formed an investigative group to look into what officials at the correctional facility should be held responsible for. The group is headed by administrative vice minister Yen Da-ho (
The justice ministry's investigative group will go to the prison this morning, officials said.
As of press time, the four fugitives were still on the run.
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