A prisoner who used a rope made of bedsheets to escape from the fifth floor of a New York City hospital has been rearrested after a month on the lam, police said Wednesday.
Yenchun Chen, 44, was apprehended Tuesday in Queens after escaping from Mount Sinai Beth Israel Hospital in Manhattan on August 9, a police spokesperson said.
Chen had been in custody on a drug charge since July 31, when he was brought to the hospital on August 4 after complaining of chest pains, authorities said.
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Yenchun Chen, 44, is pictured escaping Mount Sinai Beth Israel in this photo posted by the New York Police Department’s Crime Stoppers. (NYPD Crime Stoppers)
The escaped convict initially used a rope made of sheets to escape from a fifth-floor window five days later after asking to take a shower, police said.
He rappelled to a rooftop below and, from there, reached the street, where he got into a taxi.
He then hid in an apartment building on 45th Avenue in Queens, where law enforcement eventually found him more than a month later. Chen was said to be asleep on a friend’s sofa inside the apartment when police barged in and took him into custody.
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Chen was taken into custody Tuesday by U.S. Marshals and officers from the city’s Department of Correction intelligence bureau, a correction department spokesperson said. He was taken to Bellevue Hospital for a medical evaluation and rearrested on escape charges.
A message seeking comment was sent to the attorney with New York County Defender Services, who represented the man in the drug case.
Emergency Medical Technicians move a gurney out of the emergency entrance into an ambulance at Mt. Sinai-Beth Israel Hospital. Convict Yenchun Chen escaped from the building by tying together bedsheets into a rope and scaling down five stories. (John Lamparski/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)
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The two correctional officers guarding Chen when he escaped were suspended for 30 days without pay.
