Two violent prisoners escape while out on hospital visits

TWO convicted murderers were being hunted by police last night after they gave officers the slip in separate escapes in 24 hours while receiving treatment at hospital, writes Ian MacKinnon.

Peter Heneghan, 32, whom police described as extremely violent, was being treated at Queens Medical Centre, Nottingham, yesterday when he slipped his handcuffs and made off, evading two accompanying prison officers.

The escape followed a similar pattern to that of Anthony Watson, 31, who fled from Dryburn hospital in Durham on Monday evening after being taken there from the city's Frankland jail where he had feigned appendicitis. Police warned that they were violent and dangerous and should not be approached.

Heneghan was serving life at Nottingham prison for shooting a doorman at a Manchester nightclub. He was on his way to a ward shortly after midday for a minor operation on his nose when two men in crash helmets and another man approached the prisoner and his two guards. One of the men sprayed CS gas in the guards' faces.

Watson, who was jailed for life at Teesside Crown Court in 1986 for strangling a 19-year-old woman, tricked the guard at his bedside into leaving the room and jumped head first out the window after slipping out of the handcuffs shackling him to his bed.