21-Year-Old Escaped Inmate Recaptured After Massive Manhunt Following Guard Error at Hospital

A DANGEROUS prisoner who escaped from bungling jail guards on a hospital visit has been caught after a huge police manhunt.

Daniel Boakye – caged for a string of knifepoint robberies – was heading back to custody after being snared by cops at an address in south-east .

Daniel fled in the early hours of Tuesday morningCredit: Metropolitan Police The prisoner went missing from West Middlesex Hospital after being taken there under escortCredit: Paul Edwards – The Sun

also arrested two women aged 20 and 51, a 17-year-old girl and a man aged 30 on suspicion of assisting an offender.

It comes as we can reveal that Boakye, 21 – held at HMP Feltham, west London – escaped just months before he was due to be deported to .

Government sources told us today his deportation is still being “actively pursued”.

We told yesterday how Boakye on the run after giving dozy officers the slip while under their guard at West Middlesex Hospital, Isleworth.

Police – said to be a gang member and drill rapper – after he fled in the early hours of yesterday morning.

And we can reveal that Home Office officials and senior Youth Custody Service staff visited Feltham in west London today seeking answers over how he was allowed to go AWOL.

Boakye, of Enfield, north London was jailed for six years and five months in July 2023 over a spate of terrifying knife robberies in the capital that he and three accomplices carried out.

A source told The Sun: “He was due for a move to a Category B prison and then a detention centre before being deported to Ghana.

“He obviously doesn’t want to be sent there and that’s why he escaped.

“Boakye wants to stay in the UK and would probably prefer to serve more time in a UK jail than be deported.

“But he will still be sent to Ghana and, in the short term, his life is about to become a lot tougher.

“He will go straight to a tough jail like Belmarsh or Wandsworth and classed as a high-escape risk to kept in an ultra-secure unit.

“He will also have to wear a jumpsuit to show he’s at danger of escaping.

“This escape was likely to have been pre-planned with Boakye getting help from associates.

“He had been caught with smartphones in Feltham recently and there is a theory he planned this all using them and with help.

“The officers who escorted him were also not very experienced and one of them is likely to have un-cuffed him when they shouldn’t have done – allowing him to escape.

“The Home Office have been at Feltham, and they were furious that ‘their man’ had been lost.

“Although he has now been caught, there will still be a lot of questions over this, particularly around the actions of the guards who were with him.”

The escape was a huge embarrassment for justice bosses after a string of blunders that have seen lags – including Epping hotel migrant Hadush Kebatu –freed in error sparking manhunts.

Boakye went missing from after being taken to the hospital under escort after apparently falling ill.

He was one of four then-teenagers jailed in 2023 after stealing £115,000 worth of cryptocurrency in knifepoint robberies across London.

The court heard how the gang – Boakye, Justin Popoola, Nathan Mohalland and a 17-year-old – carried out a spate of robberies across London from June 2021 to January 2022.

They threatened victims with knives and forced them to hand over phones and passcodes needed to unlock the devices.

They then siphoned off victims’ cryptocurrency into ‘hot wallets’, resulting in more than £155,000 worth of the digital currency being stolen.

Detectives tracked them down after they used the stolen bank information to order takeaways to their home addresses.

Boakye is understood to have links to London gang OFB – Original Farm Boys – based on the Broadwater Farm estate in Tottenham.

Justice bosses were rocked by the release in error of inmates including now-deported Kebatu – jailed for assaulting a 14-year-old girl near the Bell Hotel in Epping – last year.

He sparked a manhunt by walking out of HMP Chelmsford, Essex in October.

Other lags including Algerian sex offender Brahim Kaddour-Cherif and fraudster Billy Smith were also released by accident but later returned to custody.

Ex-soldier and convicted spy Daniel Khalife escaped from HMP Wandsworth in September 2023 by strapping himself to the underside of a food lorry.

He was caught on a canal towpath in London four days later after a huge manhunt.

A Met Police spokesperson said: “Shortly after 03:30hrs on Tuesday, 10 February, the Met was informed by the Prison Service that a prisoner had escaped custody while under the care of prison staff at a west London hospital.

“Following extensive enquires by Met Police officers, the 21-year-old man was located at an address in Thamesmead at around 12:40hrs on Wednesday, 11 February and arrested on suspicion of escaping from lawful custody.

“He was also arrested on suspicion of aggravated burglary, this offence relates to a separate incident which took place prior to the man absconding custody. He remains in police custody.

“Two women, aged 20 and 51, a 17-year-old girl, and a 30-year-old man were also arrested on suspicion of assisting an offender. They have been taken into police custody.”

A Home Office spokesperson said: “All Foreign National Offenders who receive a prison sentence in the UK are referred for deportation at the earliest opportunity.

“We will not allow foreign criminals and illegal migrants to exploit our laws. We are reforming human rights laws and replacing the broken appeals system so we can scale up deportations.”