Pattaya police foil inmate’s hospital rooftop caper
An inmate who fled from his hospital bed early on Saturday was recaptured the following morning, hiding on the roof of an adjacent building, corrections officials said.
Thanapat Mayod, 37, was found by officials from the Pattaya Remand Prison hiding on the roof of the one-storey mental health ward in the Bang Lamung Hospital complex at 7am on Sunday.
The convict appeared exhausted as he was still on an intravenous urine bag that doctors had inserted after attending to his penis infection on Wednesday.
Thanaphat was admitted to hospital on Wednesday after he developed a severe infection from an injection he had taken to enlarge his manhood.
His wife visited him in hospital later and managed to smuggle in an iron cutter, so he could saw off the handcuff that chained him to the hospital bed. He managed to get away at about 2am on Saturday, though his ankles were still shackled together.
Corrections officials initially combed the deserted area behind the hospital, before deciding to search the hospital premises. They believed he could not have gone too far as he was still in a poor condition.
Thanaphat’s escape captured media attention because another high-profile convict had similarly fled prison.
Fugitive crime boss Chavalit Thongduang, aka Boss Paeng of Phatthalung’s Na Node district, escaped from prison very early on October 22 after faking an illness and being admitted to Nakhon Si Thammarat Hospital. He was serving a term of 20 years and three months for multiple crimes, including illegal possession of firearms and attempting to use firearms to free a drug suspect from police custody. Police have, so far, been unable to locate him.
Meanwhile, as soon as Thanaphat was found on the roof of the building, which is just 20 metres from the building where he was initially situated, he was immediately rushed to the emergency room for a check-up.
Then some three hours later, when his condition was stable, he was made to re-enact his escape. The convict reportedly confessed to borrowing another patient’s mobile phone to tell his wife to bring him an iron cutter.
He said once he got the cutter, he sawed off his cuffs and upon noticing that the corrections officer on watch duty was not paying him any attention, he sneaked out of the room.
He then took the lift to the ground floor and climbed out of a window.
He said that though a security guard spotted him, he fled to the back of the building, threw the iron cutter into the deserted area, before taking refuge on the roof of the mental health ward building.
The jailbird said he did not dare come out of his hiding place because he knew the police were hunting for him. He said he had escaped because he was missing his wife and children.
Police eventually escorted Thanaphat and his wife, Wasana Kuaysuwan, 30, to Pattaya court to seek a detention order. Wasana was charged with helping an inmate escape, while Thanaphat will be charged with attempting to bust out of prison.
