The es­cape of five young of­fend­ers from the Youth Train­ing Cen­tre (YTC), Gold­en Grove in Arou­ca on Thurs­day was be­lieved to be well planned and or­ches­trat­ed as In­tel­li­gence re­ceived sug­gests that there may have been a get­away car in­volved.

A hack­saw blade was al­so used to cut through the bars of the dor­mi­to­ry in which they were in.

They have been iden­ti­fied as Dil­lano Mar­cano, 16, of Pearl Dri­ve, La Paille Vil­lage, Ca­roni and LP 34 Agos­ti­ni Street, St Joseph; Jaden Fletch­er of LP#73 Par­ry­lands Vil­lage, Guapo, Sixth Com­pa­ny Cir­cu­lar Road, New Grant, Princes Town; An­tho­ny Ram­sumair, 19, of No. 12 New Vil­lage Ex­ten­sion, La For­tune, Wood­land; Bri­an Seep­er­sad, 17, of No. 24 Sea Trace, Bagatelle Road, Diego Mar­tin and Dar­ren Scott, 17, of O’Meara Road, Cara­po Vil­lage, Ari­ma.

Ac­cord­ing to a re­port, at about 2.35 am five of the ten res­i­dents were able to cut the bars to the dor­mi­to­ry which has an en­closed area to the back. The young of­fend­ers went through the cut bars in­to the en­clo­sure and were able to lift a wire fenc­ing and crawl un­der it where they then climbed through a ceil­ing out in­to the yard.

Teams of po­lice of­fi­cers and pris­ons of­fi­cers im­me­di­ate­ly launched a man­hunt for the es­capees and car­ried out search­es through­out sur­round­ing ar­eas in­clud­ing Arou­ca, along the Churchill Roo­sevelt High­way, Ca­roni, Pey­tonville and Mal­oney.

Rel­a­tives were al­so con­tact­ed and vis­it­ed by in­ves­ti­gat­ing po­lice of­fi­cers.

Speak­ing with the T&T Guardian at her home at Pey­tonville, Scott’s moth­er, He­len Stephen, made a tear­ful plea for her son to give him­self up to the po­lice and al­so to the po­lice not to hurt her son should he be spot­ted on the out­side.

“I heard it this morn­ing. I had al­ready packed my bag to go to work and was stand­ing by the road when I got the call and I came back home, sat here. I spoke to him yes­ter­day (Wednes­day). He asked if I was com­ing but I told him that his fa­ther would be go­ing in­stead. Be­cause he didn’t have any mon­ey, I gave his fa­ther $300 for him when he went to look for him.”

“Dar­ren, wher­ev­er you are, just give up your­self, it will just make things more worse. Come in, please I’m beg­ging you, do it for your moth­er... for the love of your fam­i­ly, “ she cried.

Stephen said she be­lieves that her son may have es­caped be­cause he want­ed free­dom, “He is 17, he turned 17 last No­vem­ber. He’s been on the in­side about ten months. They (po­lice) said if he called to en­cour­age him to give up him­self be­cause I know what he did by es­cap­ing was wrong. My arms are open wide for him wait­ing but I know I have to do what I need to do. He just wants to be home, to be free. He just wants to be with his fam­i­ly. I re­al­ly hope he tries to make con­tact with us be­cause I want to know what’s go­ing on with him, “ Stephen said.

An­oth­er rel­a­tive, who wished not to be iden­ti­fied said she had a feel­ing that “it was com­ing (re­fer­ring to the es­cape).”

Ram­sumair’s moth­er, Lil­la Mo­hammed said she is wor­ried about her son’s wel­fare, “I am a moth­er. I must be wor­ried. I just want my son to give him­self up to the po­lice be­cause I don’t know why and that this would have hap­pened.”

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that all rel­a­tives homes and places of in­ter­ests where they think the young of­fend­ers may turn up are un­der heavy sur­veil­lance from plain­clothes po­lice of­fi­cers.

Com­mis­sion­er of Pris­ons, Ger­ald Wil­son ex­plained that at the YTC a tech­ni­cal is­sue ex­ists where the YTC has min­i­mal se­cu­ri­ty and a dor­mi­to­ry type en­vi­ron­ment where res­i­dents have the priv­i­lege of move­ment.

He fur­ther ex­plained that the in­sti­tu­tion is gov­erned un­der the Chil­dren’s Act and they op­er­ate un­der in­struc­tions of the Chil­dren’s Au­thor­i­ty.

Wil­son urged the es­capees to let good sense pre­vail, “Let good sense pre­vail. Re­turn to a po­lice sta­tion with an at­tor­ney or back to the in­sti­tu­tion and the Law will take its course.”

Pres­i­dent of the Pris­ons Of­fi­cers As­so­ci­a­tion, Ceron Richards echoed Wil­son’s ex­pla­na­tion about the YTC dif­fer­ence in op­er­a­tions as com­pared to oth­er pris­ons, “This is an in­sti­tu­tion. This is not a prison be­cause of the par­tic­u­lar type of en­vi­ron­ment and treat­ment.”

“Set­tings like this will make it much eas­i­er for some­thing like this to hap­pen. We have to un­der­stand the con­text in which this has hap­pened un­der where there’s min­i­mal se­cu­ri­ty. Of course we try our best to min­imise oc­cur­rences like this, “ Richards said.

He added that an over­all as­sess­ment needs to be done to iden­ti­fy if there are gaps to be filled.

Gen­er­al Sec­re­tary at the as­so­ci­a­tion, Lester Wal­cott said there needs a prop­er light­ing and prop­er CCTV cam­eras not on­ly at the YTC but at all oth­er pris­ons.