Prison escape, reward offered

Armed police are still hunting man who broke out of Hebei jail

BEIJING - The prison management authority has offered a 100,000-yuan ($15,600) reward to anyone that helps the police capture a prisoner who escaped from a jail near Gaoguzhuang village in North China's Hebei province on Sunday morning.

Also anyone providing information that leads to his capture will receive a reward of 20,000 yuan, a publicity department official with the jail said on Wednesday.

"The prisoner might have stolen cash after escaping and attempted to hire a taxi," said the official who refused to give her name.

"Only one prisoner escaped at 6:15 am on Sept 11. Police are still hunting him," she said.

The male convict, Wang Zhenqing, 43, from neighboring Henan province, began a 10-year sentence for theft at the No 3 Hebei Jail in January 2011, according to the jail's official.

The official declined to say whether the man was the only prisoner who attempted to escape and if he managed to sneak out or forced his way out.

"No one was hurt in the jail break and everything has gone back to normal," she said. "This is all we can disclose at the moment."

The jail mainly houses and rehabilitates felons convicted of serious crimes.

Both the local Shenzhou Public Security Bureau and the armed police force based in the jail refused to reveal details of their plan to capture the runaway or their deployment.

But locals in Gaoguzhuang village, Shenzhou city, said they saw a large number of armed police around the jail and at traffic intersections on Sunday morning and police were searching cars at multiple checkpoints along motorways in the Shenzhou area.

Pang Huiwu, an official with Hebei Prison Management Bureau, said there have been few prison breaks in recent years.

In March 2008, prisoner Xie Wanli, born in 1980, hijacked a truck crane at a jail in Hebei and rammed open the anti-riot gates and two other gates before crushing through a wall .

Xie was later caught by police and sentenced to life in jail.

In Mach 2009, two prisoners sawed open steel nets covering a sewer at a jail in Hanzhong city, Shaanxi province. They were sentenced to life in jail after police tracked them down them in Weinan and Xi'an.

In October 2009, four prisoners killed a police officer and cut off another's finger in order to open the identity lock in Hohhot, the Inner Mongolia autonomous region. Three were caught and one was killed resisting arrest.