Two prisoners escape psychiatric facility in Nijmegen

The police are urgently looking for two prisoners who escaped from the psychiatric institution De Pompestichting in Nijmegen at around 8:30 p.m. on Tuesday. Accomplices helped the two men escape by cutting a hole in the clinic's fence with an angle grinder. They drove off in a waiting car, the clinic confirmed to De Gelderlander.

The men are Luciano D. and Sherwin Benshomin W., the police said. The court sentenced D. to five years in prison with institutionalized psychiatric treatment last year for an armed robbery. W. was sentenced in 2019 to five years and six months in prison with institutionalized psychiatric treatment for two counts of extortion and an armed robbery in which one victim died.

The police warned people who encounter the two not to approach them, but to call the police immediately.

Sources told De Gelderlander that one of the men was serving a court-imposed sentence of institutionalized psychiatric treatment and had broken out of various juvenile detention centers in the past.

This is not the first escape from De Pompestichting. In 2017 a prisoner escaped by cutting a hole in the fence with construction scissors. In 2019 a prisoner managed to clamber over the fence with prepared shoes, a knife, and a fork. The clinic is in the process of constructing a second fence around its perimeter.