Prison Van stops for Chips in Inchicore, violent prisioner escapes

You couldn't make this one up. A prison van with THREE prison officers transporting a prisoner from the Mater to Portlaoise Prison decides to stop at a chipper in Inchicore. Harry Houdini in the back of the prison van somehow gets his wrists out of the handcuffs , push the prison officers out of his way and then outruns the three of them.

This criminal has over 70 convictions and was serving a 10 year sentence with release due in 2019. The prison service are claiming that they were stopping for chips for the prisoner who hadn't eaten. This is despite the fact that the Mater where he came from has plenty of food, sandwich shops inside it, etc and the journey time from Dublin to Portlaoise is under two hours which isn't exactly difficult to withstand on an empty stomach. The prison service are also claiming that he somehow slipped out of his handcuffs, then engaged in a scuffle when they opened the prison van door to give him his chips and he managed to escape the three of them.

What makes it even worse is that the location they decided to stop for chips (Inchicore) is pretty close to where the prisoner is from (Ballyfermot) so he would have had few problems finding a friendly safe house to lay low in, out of all the places between Dublin and Portlaoise to stop they stopped along the route in the single best location for the prisoner to do a runner and stand a decent chance of evading the Gardai, which he has done so far.

Full story
http://www.independent.ie/irish-news/news/gardai-hunting-dangerous-criminal-who-escaped-prison-van-30845618.html