Trinidad: Manhunt for prisoner who escaped 9 months shy of release

(Trinidad Guardian) Pris­on­er Dil­lon Clarke, who es­caped from the Gold­en Grove Prison in Arou­ca yes­ter­day while out on an agri­cul­tur­al project, re­mains on the run.

Up to press time, Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that teams from the T&T Pris­ons Ser­vice and the Po­lice Ser­vice were still con­duct­ing search­es through­out the area.

 
Sev­er­al of the search­es took place in and around Arou­ca, Trinci­ty, Orop­une Gar­dens, Pi­ar­co and Mal­oney.

Or­di­nary Pris­on­er, Dil­lon Clarke, 34, who is at­tached to the agri­cul­tur­al out-gang, es­caped le­gal cus­tody at about 7.50 am on Thurs­day. The project was tak­ing place in close prox­im­i­ty to the prison grounds.

An alarm was im­me­di­ate­ly raised and of­fi­cers as­signed to the Emer­gency Re­sponse Unit re­spond­ed. The Arou­ca Po­lice was al­so con­tact­ed and a search com­menced for Clarke in all the sur­round­ing ar­eas.

Clarke is five feet eight inch­es in height, of a brown com­plex­ion and slim built. He has a long scar on his left fore­arm. His last known ad­dress is Mt. Zion Road, Ma­tu­ri­ta Vil­lage, Ari­ma.

Clarke was sen­tenced in De­cem­ber 2018 to 24-months im­pris­on­ment for ‘Ma­li­cious Dam­age’ and was ex­pect­ed to be re­leased from prison in April next year.

Speak­ing with the Guardian Me­dia, Com­mis­sion­er of Pris­ons, Ger­ard Wil­son re­as­sured the pub­lic that pris­on­ers who are placed on the out-gang agri­cul­tur­al projects are the ones who have al­ready served the ma­jor­i­ty of their sen­tenc­ing.

He al­so added that they are in­ter­viewed and as­sessed be­fore en­roll­ment in such pro­grammes.

Wil­son, how­ev­er, made it clear that any es­capee should be of con­cern to mem­bers of the pub­lic and added that every­one should be on the look­out and cau­tious, “The risk is less with the pris­on­ers who have served most of their sen­tenc­ing time that’s why we have them out there but we don’t know the men­tal state still. Any per­son who is serv­ing a sen­tence and es­cape peo­ple should be wor­ried.”

Asked whether or not this es­cape will af­fect the agri­cul­tur­al project in any way in­clud­ing a sus­pen­sion, Wil­son said “No” and added: “We have to con­tin­ue to plant food crops to save tax­pay­ers the cost and we will con­tin­ue to as­sess in­mates.”

Asked if se­cu­ri­ty and su­per­vi­sion of the out-gang pris­on­ers will be in­creased/height­ened, Wil­son replied: “We don’t have enough staff to su­per­vise each in­mate on out gangs.”

Back in May, eight pris­on­ers es­caped from the re­mand sec­tion of the Gold­en Grove prison. All were ap­pre­hend­ed.

Any­one with in­for­ma­tion on the where­abouts of es­capee Dil­lon Clarke is en­cour­aged to con­tact the po­lice at 999, 555, 911, 800-TIPS or any po­lice sta­tion, text/What­sApp 482-GARY (4279) or con­tact the Prison Ser­vice at 623 7070.