HOUDINI EVADES COPS AGAIN

THE prisoner who mysteriously escaped from Odi Prison, north of Pretoria, two weeks ago has made another dash for freedom.

Police and Correctional Services officers involved in an operation to re-capture Phillimon Hlepo Chabalala are now chasing shadows. Sowetan gathered that the officers set out to Mmakaunyana, Chabalala’s village outside Pretoria, on Friday after learning that he had been seen there. But the Houdini disappeared right before their eyes.

A source told Sowetan that Chabalala was spotted in the company of another convict who is wanted for violating parole conditions and a string of other offences allegedly committed after his release.

Police and their Correctional Services counterparts managed to arrest the parolee, Cornelius Kganyago, who has been out on parole since November 2007. His parole was due to expire in August 2018, according to authorities. It has now been revoked.

Ofentse Morwane, spokesman for the Department of Correctional Services in Gauteng, confirmed that the operation took place. “During the operation, Kganyago was arrested but Chabalala managed to evade arrest,” Morwane told Sowetan.

“On Friday, 3 March 2017, upon responding to a tip-off regarding the whereabouts of escapee Phillimon Chabalala, the SAPS, together with DCS officials, managed to locate escapee Chabalala in the company of a parolee, Cornelius Kganyago,” he said.

Sowetan broke the story of Chabalala’s escape two weeks ago. He was serving 15 years at the Odi Prison for robbery.

He joins a list of a number of escapees whom authorities chased for a while before they were re-arrested.

The late Mozambican national, Ananias Mathe, spent two weeks a free man after escaping from Pretoria’s maximum security prison, Kgosi Mampuru II, in 2006. He was rumoured to have coated his body with Vaseline and squeezed through a tiny window.

Heist kingpin Collen Chauke, who died in 2003, appears to hold the record of an escapee who took longer to be re-arrested.

Also escaping from Kgosi Mampuru II prison in December 1997 with two other prisoners – Sipho Nkuna and Lassie Sibiya – Chauke was re-arrested in January 1999.

Majority of escapees in the country are captured within 48 hours, said Morwane.

Only 71 escapes were recorded across the country’s 243 correctional centres last year, out of an inmate population of 161 984.