Taxis are lined up in traffic, Wednesday, Jan. 29, 2020, in New York. (AP Photo/Mark Lennihan)
A prisoner receiving medical treatment escaped from a New York City hospital by tying sheets together, rappelling from a fifth-floor window and hailing a taxi, police said.
The 44-year-old man escaped from Mount Sinai Beth Israel hospital in Manhattan shortly after 4:30 p.m. Wednesday and was still at large Thursday, a police spokesperson said.
The man had been in custody since a July 31 arrest for drug possession and was brought to the hospital Aug. 4 for treatment of a medical problem, a spokesperson for the city Department of Correction said.
He was taken to the bathroom for a shower and managed to escape out the window using bedsheets, police said. He rappelled to a rooftop below and from there made it to the street, where he got into a taxi.
The police and correction departments were looking for him Thursday.
When police responded to an alarm call at a TJ Maxx in Rockland, Maine on Thanksgiving Day last week, they weren't sure what exactly they would find. The alarm hadn't been tripped by a burglar but instead, it was a different kind of break-in -- a white-tailed deer.
