The prisoner who escaped while being under guard at the New Amsterdam (NA) Hospital last Monday morning was recaptured on Saturday night on a street in NA, a police release said yesterday.

The release said that alert ranks on mobile patrol on Saturday night spotted the 22-year-old Linden Flavius on Cheddi Jagan Street, New Amsterdam. The man is to be charged shortly.

Flavius, whose address was given as Agricola, East Bank Demerara, was a patient at the New Amsterdam Hospital under the watch of a prison officer when he successfully removed his foot cuffs and escaped from the building.

It is not clear how the prisoner freed himself and left without being seen by any other patient or nurse. Reports are that the prison officer had cuffed him to the bed to visit the lavatory. The officer has since been interdicted from duty, pending an inquiry.

Flavius was serving a three-year sentence for break and enter and larceny and he was hospitalized after a fight with another inmate at the New Amsterdam Prisons.
He was scheduled to be released in 2010.