A prisoner who escaped from a Downtown hospital on Sunday night was caught by police on the Upper West Side Tuesday, according to authorities.
Tiffany Neumann, 23, had slipped out of her handcuffs and fled from NewYork-Presbyterian/Lower Manhattan Hospital on Sunday after she was arrested the previous day for skipping out on her bill at the Hi-Life Bar and Grill on Amsterdam Avenue and snatching clothes from a store down the block, according to the New York Times.
Police say she was apprehended Sept. 1 around 8:45 a.m. within the 24th Precinct, the same area where she was previously arrested over the weekend.
She has now ben charged with escape, four counts of grand larceny and four counts of criminal possession of stolen property.
At a press conference on Monday, police officials expressed their anger over the episode, which was at least the fourth in the city since June, according to the Times.
The chief of the department, James P. O’Neill, attributed the escape to “inattentiveness and carelessness” on the part of the officers involved, one of whom has reportedly been suspended.
“There’s no excuse for it,” O’Neill said. “It’s embarrassing. She’s not a mastermind criminal.”
Neumann had originally given a fake name to the officers who arrested her and also told them she was pregnant and feeling ill. They took her to the hospital from a Manhattan booking facility on Sunday afternoon, from where she escaped.
— YANNIC RACK
