The four escaped prisoners from Bali’s notorious Kerobokan Prison did not drown in the tiny tunnel leading out from under the penitentiary’s walls, police have confirmed.
Australian Shaun Edward Davidson, Bulgarian Dimitar Nikolov Iliev, Indian Sayed Muhammad Said, and Malaysian Tee Kok King, fled Kerobokan Prison Sunday night through a tight drain/waste tunnel that was just 50 x 75 centimeters in diameter and around 13 meters long.
The tunnel opens up outside the prison on to a very public road.
Police found the tunnel filled with water on Monday due to heavy rainfall and thought it possible that the prisoners never made it out and had gotten stuck in the tight space.
In a desperate attempt to check out the flooded tunnel, police employed scuba equipment and even tried to use a hose to syphon water out, but apparently couldn’t really explore it all the way through until Wednesday.
“We have gone through the tunnel … and it’s been confirmed, no one got stuck inside,” head of Badung District Police, Mikael Hutabarat, told AAP in report published Wednesday evening.
“So far, we haven’t found any other way of escaping.”
Authorities have said they found a shirt, a flashlight that was still on, and matches about four meters inside the tunnel.
Kerobokan Prison is severely overcrowded and understaffed. While exact statistics on the prison’s capacity and population have varied across reports, the latest figures from corrections obtained by AAP say the prison is designed for just 323 and this month is housing 1,376.
The head of Kerobokan Prison said that 10 guards were on duty on Sunday night when the escape is believed to have taken place, but the tower overlooking the tunnel was unmanned due to staff shortages.
And while the prison does have CCTVs, there unfortunately wasn’t one pointed right at the entrance to the tunnel—which according to News Corp Australia, the prison warden would pass it weekly, but never worried about, claiming that he thought it was just a septic tank.
Another suspect detail of the case is that Davidson’s Facebook account was active in the days leading up to his escape, including a live video on May 12 from what’s clearly inside the prison.
Davidson, who was serving a year-long sentence for using a stolen passport, was motivated to flee prison just 10 weeks before his release date because he didn’t want to get deported and face drug charges back home in Australia.
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