It was the question on everyone’s lips last week: what prompts a young inmate to escape from a minimum security prison with less than a month left on his sentence?
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Well, the answer to that depends of who you’re willing to believe –the criminal himself or the people tasked with housing him.
Shaun Primmer sparked a 24-hour manhunt by Corrective Services staff and later police when he absconded from the Illawarra Reintegration Centre at Unanderra sometime between 11 o’clock last Thursday night and 1.30 on Friday morning.
Primmer had been serving a five-month non-parole period for driving and theft offences and had been due to be released back into the community on February 4.
Primmer was being housed in the segregation unit inside the jail when correctives staff discovered the security grille outside his cell had been loosened away from the wall, allowing the window to be displaced. Primmer then manouevred his 200cm frame through the resulting hole.
The police dog squad responded immediately, tracking Primmer through bushland towards the Princes Highway, then to Berkeley Road, where the scent was lost.
Primmer remained at large until just after 6.30pm, when police received a tip off that Primmer was holed up inside a house on Lowanna Street, less than 3km away from the jail.
Officers swooped – initially on the wrong house – before Primmer was discovered hiding in a manhole in the cavity of a neighbouring home.
Primmer pleaded guilty to an escape charge in Wollongong Local Court on Tuesday, with his lawyer, Fiona Jowett, claiming family was the reason behind the 23-year-old’s bizarre escape that day.
She said Primmer had become concerned about his mother’s health after she told him a week earlier her asthma was causing her grief.
“It was playing on his mind – his mum is the only person he has in the whole wide world – and he was worried she was going to die without him seeing her.”
However, police documents tendered to the court provide a counter reason; they say Primmer had been caught with contraband at the minimum-security facility and as a result was due to be transferred to another prison in the morning.
Neither account was further explored by Magistrate Robert Walker, who accepted evidence that Primmer’s personal circumstances, including his very low intellect, made him different to the average person coming before the courts.
He convicted Primmer of the escape offence and sentenced him to an additional one month behind bars, meaning Primmer will now be released on March 3.