HIROSHIMA (Kyodo) — Police are hunting for an inmate who escaped from a prison in Hiroshima on Wednesday and have put him on the nationwide wanted list after obtaining an arrest warrant.
The inmate on the run is Li Guolin, a 40-year-old Chinese man, who had been in Hiroshima Prison for about three and a half years following his conviction for attempted murder and theft, according to prison officials.
Also on Wednesday, the National Police Agency put Li on a special wanted list, a measure which has not been taken since 1995 when it was applied to members of the AUM Shinrikyo cult.
The prison officials said Li went missing while he was exercising in a prison playground around 10:30 a.m. At the time, three guards were watching some 50 inmates but none noticed, they said.
Li is thought to have climbed over a 2.6-meter fence around the field through a nearby warehouse and then scaled the 5-meter outer fence that is under repair by using scaffolding set up by construction workers.
A guard at a nearby construction site said he saw Li dropping from the fence to the ground and then running away.
The security wires on the outer fence were temporarily removed earlier this month as the repair work that began in September is nearly finished.
The officials said the inmate was wearing only his white underwear as he had taken off his work uniform before escaping. He is 173 centimeters tall and weighs 66 kilograms, having close-cropped hair.
Li was sentenced to 23 years in prison by the Okayama District Court for breaking into a house in Okayama to commit a theft and firing a shot at a police officer in 2005.
After his arrest, Li robbed a police car and went temporarily on the run.
“We are truly sorry. We just hope that he will not commit crimes again,” said Hideyuki Yamasaki, head of the general affairs division at the prison.
The site is in a residential area about 1.5 kilometers south of the Peace Memorial Park.
(Mainichi Japan) January 12, 2012
