Security guards at Chinese psychiatric hospital sacked after four patients make audacious escape
- Group got through main exit by posing as visitors taking their relatives out for a break
- Quartet had earlier found the key to a security door ‘hidden’ on a windowsill
A high-security psychiatric hospital in southwest China has promised to improve its screening procedures after four of its residents managed to trick guards into letting them leave the premises, according to a local newspaper report.
The quartet, none of whom were identified, from the Nanchong Mental Health Centre in Sichuan province spent several days in the community last month before being rounded up and returned to the secure unit, West China Metropolis Daily reported on Saturday.
The four were able to make their escape after finding out that cleaners at the facility hid a key to the one of the internal security doors on a window sill.
In the early hours of May 19, the patients changed out of their uniforms and into regular clothing, unlocked the door and headed for the hospital’s main exit. Once there they were challenged by security guards but managed to fool them by pretending to be two visiting relatives taking the other two out for a home visit, the report said.
The guards became suspicious only after one of them remembered seeing the “visiting relatives” wearing hospital issue slippers. They then conducted a room by room check and the headcount came up four short.
