Probe launched after convicted murderer bolts from hospital

Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan has ordered an investigation into how a notorious convicted mob murderer serving two life terms managed to escape from the Israel Prison Service and led police on a chase across the country overnight Sunday.

Yaron Sanker, imprisoned for murders he carried out on behalf of a criminal organization in 2003, escaped from a hospital in central Israel Sunday where he was being treated while on a hunger strike he began a few weeks ago. He was later caught and told police he had wanted to visit his father’s grave.

At approximately 10 p.m. Sunday, Sanker found himself alone in his room at Assaf Harofeh Medical Center near Tel Aviv.

Officials say they do not yet know why Sanker was left alone by the three-guard detail assigned to watch over him, or why he was not handcuffed to his hospital bed, as required by regulations.

After the guards left the room, Sanker found some cash inside one guard’s personal bag, stole the bag and fled through a window. He crossed the hospital campus to the taxi stand at its entrance, the Ynet news site reports.

Dressed in hospital pajamas, he hired a cab to take him to Beersheba. When he discovered he did not have enough money for the ride, he called an acquaintance and asked him to meet him in Beersheba with money.

The acquaintance either could not be reached or refused the request, and the taxi driver dropped Sanker off not far from the hospital, on Rishon Lezion’s Herzl Street.

He caught another cab, promising the driver that the money would be waiting for him in Beersheba. By the time they reached Kiryat Gat, a 40-minute drive north of Beersheba, Sanker began to suspect the driver had recognized him as an escaped convict and asked to get off in the city. He proceeded to the Kiryat Gat central bus station and boarded a bus to Beersheba.

At the Beersheba Central Bus Station, Sanker, by now the target of a nationwide manhunt by hundreds of police, was identified by a security guard and caught.

“I wanted to visit my father’s grave,” he told investigators who interrogated him after his capture in the early hours of Monday morning.

Sanker was sentenced in 2006 to two consecutive life terms and a concurrent 25 years after he confessed to serving as an assassin for the Ohana crime family in its battles with other underworld organizations. He was convicted for the 2003 murders of Haim Shabi and Tomer Shabat, the attempted murder of Shimon Zarihan, and one case of armed robbery.

The Tel Aviv District Court that sentenced him called his criminal exploits “one of the most extreme [cases] even by the standards of this court, which has dealt with the most severe of crimes.” The court is one instance below Israel’s Supreme Court.