Austrian police said on Friday that they had apprehended one of the four men who escaped from a secure medical facility in Bavaria that treats prisoners late on Saturday, August 17.
He was arrested in the province of Styria in southern Austria, some 200 kilometers (roughly 122 miles) from the border to Germany.
Police said the man had not resisted arrest when captured late on Thursday, and that authorities had started to apply for authorization to transfer him back to Germany.
The town of Straubing in Bavaria where the hospital is situated is fairly close to the borders to both Austria and the Czech Republic.
“This is a first piece of good news,” Bavaria’s minister for social affairs, Ulrike Scharf, said in a statement, also thanking law enforcement and the general public for their assistance.
Six days on the run, and counting
The other three men are still on the loose, almost a week after they threatened and injured a staff member at the secure hospital in Straubing in Bavaria, forcing him to open a secure gate and facilitate their escape.
A European Arrest Warrant is in effect for all three remaining fugitives and a search operation is ongoing.
Prosecutors and criminal investigators are preparing charges on the suspicion of hostage-taking and actual bodily harm.
Police said the four escapees were in jail because of a mixture of narcotics and property offenses and that they should be considered dangerous.
Bavaria’s state minister for social affairs, Ulrike Scharf, has since said that safety procedures, protective measures and legal provisions were all being “intensively reviewed” in light of the breakout. She said protecting the public and employees at such facilities should have the highest priority.
The case drew further attention in Bavaria, given another prisoner’s escape during a supervised day-release on August 8 this year.
msh/rmt (AFP, dpa)
