Outside agency to probe prisoner escape at HSC

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This article was published 28/01/2012 (5202 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Manitoba’s justice department will bring in an outside expert to look into an incident Sunday in which a prisoner escaped custody while undergoing treatment at the Health Sciences Centre.

“The department will be doing a comprehensive review as to what happened, including a review of the operating procedures. And in this case they will be getting some outside advice,” Justice Minister Andrew Swan said Friday.

Winnipeg police arrested Stephane Martin Bissonnette, 29, late Thursday afternoon at a downtown hotel. He had been on the lam for four days after escaping the custody of provincial remand guards at the hospital.

Police charged him in connection with two bank robberies that occurred on the day of his rearrest — one on the 300 block of Portage Avenue and one on the 1400 block of Main Street. At the time of his escape, Bissonnette had been awaiting trial on robbery and firearm offences stemming from an incident on Oct. 28. A subsequent investigation resulted in several more robbery and break-and-enter charges against Bissonnette relating to incidents last October.

Swan said Friday his department has yet to contract an outside party to conduct a review into the escape. But he said it will likely be someone from a correctional service outside the province.

He said the department wants to learn from the incident and “obviously take every reasonable step to make sure that something like this does not happen again.”

The minister said he could not comment on details relating to the escape. “I wouldn’t want to say anything specific about the case that would jeopardize the case going forward.”

A government spokeswoman would only say Friday there were four correctional officers on duty at the Health Sciences Centre at the time of the escape.

larry.kusch@freepress.mb.ca