 SYDNEY, Australia -- An inmate who used laxatives to shed 31 pounds so he could squeeze through a hole in a prison wall had been frustrated by the indefinite sentence he was serving, a judge said.
"Where you off to, Cole?"
"Gotta go!"
"Again?" |
Robert Cole, 37, spent three days on the run from police in January after slipping his 123-pound frame through a 6-inch wide hole he had chiseled with a butter knife in the window frame of a hospital wing at Sydney's Long Bay Jail. Cole, who had been hospitalized for psychiatric treatment, spent three weeks scraping the brickwork near the window bars to widen the space, District Court Judge Roger Dive said Friday.
| Sounds like he shoulda spent the time being medicated... |
Dive sentenced Cole to two years and two months' imprisonment after he pleaded guilty to a charge of escape. The sentence was backdated to his recapture on Jan. 21. When he escaped, Cole had been serving an indefinite sentence in the prison hospital after a jury found him not guilty of armed robbery in 2003 on the grounds of mental illness.
| At least the two year sentence relieves his frustration at his indefinite sentence. |
Dive said he accepted that Cole was "very frustrated" at the time of his escape, as "he did not have a definite date of release and no apparent treatment plan." |