Corrections Canada will review why a prisoner with a history of jail breaks was in a minimum security facility, after he went missing from William Head Institution for two hours Wednesday.
Guards at the Metchosin prison alerted West Shore RCMP at 10:30 a.m. that 61-year-old Michiel Gordon Hollinger could not be located. He failed to respond to a page over the intercom, said Corrections Canada spokesman Rick Cawsey.
Searches conducted inside and outside the prison involved an RCMP helicopter, marine unit and canine team. Police said Hollinger should be considered violent.
A police dog located the inmate hiding on the 32-hectare jail grounds at 12:30 p.m.
Cawsey would not say if Hollinger was planning to escape but said “he was being elusive.”
Hollinger, a career criminal with nearly 200 convictions, is serving a life sentence for carrying out a violent bank robbery in Port Perry, Ont., in 1994. He shot and injured five people, including three Durham police officers. He also held an elderly couple hostage during his attempt to evade police.
He is an experienced escape artist, breaking out of two medium-security jails — Collins Bay Institution in Kingston, Ont., and Saskatchewan Penitentiary — and maximum-security Millhaven Institution near Kingston. After the escape from Millhaven in 1984, he robbed at least three banks in the 14 months he was on the lam.
Hollinger had changed his name from Mitchell (Micky) McArthur. In 1990, under the former name, he wrote a book titled I’d Rather Be Wanted Than Had: The Memoirs of an Unrepentant Bank Robber.
Cawsey could not say why Hollinger was placed in a minimum-security facility.
Hollinger will undergo a security review and could be transferred to another, higher-security institution.
The attempted escape comes less than two weeks after two other inmates slipped out of William Head Sept. 7 by walking down to the rocks at night and, at low tide, swimming 200 metres to a nearby beach.
The escape prompted a massive manhunt as RCMP helicopters, boats and canine units searched for Brian Peter Patrick and Dean Allen Benton.
Twelve hours after the escape, on Sept. 8, Patrick was arrested as he walked down the Galloping Goose trail near Belmont High in Langford. Benton eluded police until 10 a.m. Sept. 9. He was arrested on Sooke Road near Hatley Memorial Gardens.
Both are facing charges of escaping lawful custody and will likely serve the rest of their sentences in a medium- or high-security Lower Mainland facility. The review into that escape is ongoing.
