Snoozing policeman who let convict escape from hospital is jailed six months
Elderly officer also sees pension and salary suspended for sleeping at a hotel, allowing prisoner to unlock her chains and flee
PUBLISHED : Tuesday, 23 September, 2014, 1:16pm
UPDATED : Tuesday, 23 September, 2014, 1:20pm
Wu Nan [email protected]
A salesman, manning an exhibit of X-ray equipment, sleeps next to an image of a man with weapons attached to his body at a China police equipment exhibition. Photo: Reuters
A policeman who fell asleep on the job and allowed a woman convict to escape during hospital treatment has been charged with breach of duty and sentenced to six months in jail, the Southern Weekly reported on Tuesday.
The policeman, surnamed Mai, was supposed to keep watch over the inmate while she was at the Shenzhen Armed Police Hospital in Futian district for urinary disease treatment on September 23 last year.
Instead, Mai, who was 60 at the time of the incident, felt tired and went to sleep at a nearby hotel, leaving an auxiliary policewoman assigned with him to watch over the prisoner, surnamed Qin.
Qin, who was convicted in a 750,000 yuan (HK$945,000) fraud case, was tethered to the hospital bed with ankle chains. The two officers decided not to handcuff her so she could drink her pills easier.
Shortly after midnight, nurses were shocked to discover that the patient had fled, leaving the ankle chains on the bed.
A panicked Mai was called back to the hospital, where he learned that the auxiliary policewoman had also fallen asleep outside the ward.
The policewoman said Qin attempted to bribe her with 100,000 yuan in exchange for setting the inmate free.
The incident prompted a manhunt, and Qin was caught after three days on the run.
Mai was arrested for breach of duty. Under mainland Criminal Law, serious irresponsibility by judicial staff which causes a suspect in custody to escape carries jail sentences of three or more years.
However Mai received a relatively light jail term, with one year’s probation, as he was about to reach retirement age. His pension and salary were suspended.
The police station Mai worked for said there were supposed to be three policemen assigned to place Qin under 24-hour guard. However, only Mai and the auixiliary policewoman were deployed.
It was unclear if the policewoman was punished.
Security breaches in China’s jails recently came into the spotlight after three prisoners strangled a policeman to death and escaped jail in Heilongjiang province in early September. Two of the inmates were caught days after.
The last of the three to get caught by police, murder convict Gao Yulun, was reported by his own relatives while on the lam.
