Citizens Beware: Canada Wants Answers on Quebec Jailbreak, Interpol Issues Alert on 3 Fugitives
Quebec Premier Philippe Couillard has ordered a probe and wants immediate answers on how three fugitives were able to escape from a jail near Quebec City over the weekend using a helicopter.
"It's not acceptable. I'm not happy at all with this. We're going to deal with this, first bring the people back into jail, and then make sure this doesn't happen again," CBC News quoted Couillard.
On Wednesday, the Interpol released an Orange Notice to all 190-member countries to help track down the three fugitives. The notice warned of "an event, a person, an object or a process representing an imminent threat and danger to persons or property." The organisation released the international alert based on a request from its Ottawa branch, run by the RCMP.
Yves Denis, Denis Lefebvre and Serge Pomerleau managed to escape from the Orsainville Detention Centre in suburban Quebec City on Saturday when a chopper landed in a courtyard. The flight from the detention facility happened so fast as the chooper scooped them up and quickly took off.
Denis is facing first-degree murder charges, while Lefebvre and Pomerleau are facing charges of murder and conspiracy to murder, according to the Montreal Gazette. Arrested in 2010, they were originally slapped with drug-trafficking and gangsterism charges.
Saturday's escape plan was the second time that inmates have escaped from jail via helicopter from a Quebec detention facility. Two inmates in March 2013 made a similar escape plan from a St-Jérôme detention centre. They were immediately caught by police within a few hours and brought back to detention.
"Two escapes by helicopter in Quebec is not acceptable. Two is too many," Couillard said.
"The first priority is to get those three persons back in jail again," Couillard told reporters in Quebec City. "This is what threatens citizens' security as we speak.
"Now, the government is not satisfied with the flow of information, the level of information and the coherence of the information that it has received from the various actors, and there are four of them in this situation. We want to go at the bottom of that situation."
