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'Houdini' gets urgent operation
04/12/2006 14:45 - (SA)
Pretoria - Only hours after C-Max prison escapee Annanias Mathe was arrested and taken back to the Pretoria jail, he will leave again for an urgent operation.
Correctional Services Minister Ngconde Balfour said Mathe's blood pressure dropped and he would be taken to a hospital for an operation to fix the shattered bone in his leg where he was wounded during his Monday morning arrest.
Balfour declined to say which hospital Mathe would be taken to but said Mathe would be accompanied by heavily armed police and correctional services guards.
He hoped Mathe could be taken back to C-Max as soon as the operation was over.
Mathe, a Mozambican citizen, escaped from prison two weeks ago.
He was caught on Monday morning after stealing a car during a house robbery in Craighall Park.
Mathe was wounded and arrested, after the car which he stole was tracked to Tembisa on the East Rand.
"The tracking device on the vehicle was activated and the tracking company started to follow the vehicle, assisted by a helicopter," said national police spokesperson Director Sally de Beer.
An employee of the Altech Netstar, the company who tracked the car, chased Mathe, who stabbed him in the face. The employee then fired shots at Mathe, hitting him in the buttocks and legs.
"The perpetrator has been positively identified by police detectives as Annanias Mathe," said de Beer.
After Mathe's escape, reports said it appeared that the "Houdini" stripped and covered his entire body with petroleum jelly to climb out of a window measuring 20cm x 60cm.
Following his escape, two men, among them a reverend apparently resembling Mathe, were arrested and later freed.
Mathe faces 51 charges, including murder, attempted murder, rape, hijacking and armed robbery, said De Beer.
- SAPA
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