By C1 Staff
LIVERPOOL, UK — An inmate who was transported to a hospital for drug overdose slipped away when his escort mistook their charge to be an elderly patient.
The Liverpool Echo reports that Craig Clamp, originally arrested for theft from a supermarket, jumped out a window while the officers who were supposed to be watching him sat by the bed of a different person.
Clamp claimed to be woozy after swallowing a bag of heroin, initiating the hospital transport.
The prosecutor for Clamp attempted to explain the situation: “Officers were put on the ward to supervise the prisoner. Just before 6 a.m., a time of low attention for most people, two new officers came in to relieve those who had been on night duty.
“They saw their colleagues sitting at a table in the ward facing a man in a bed. After discussion with them, [the new officers] took over their duties. Half an hour later a nurse asked where Mr. Clamp was, had he gone to the toilet?
“Mr. Clamp was not the man in the bed.”
It turned out that Clamp had taken advantage of the confusion to make his escape. Video showed him walking across the parking lot of the hospital at a “fairly brisk trot.”
“It’s at odds with the suggestion he woke up in a daze and wandered off,” the prosecutor added.
Clamp was arrested a day and a half later and pleaded guilty to escaping from custody.