By JO-MARIE BROWN
Two dangerous prison escapers and a man accused of aggravated robbery have been caught after two separate hunts in Taranaki today.
Up to 40 armed police blocked off streets and warned residents to lock themselves indoors while they searched for Phillip William Payne and Steven James Shortcliffe as well as two suspected robbers on the run in the area.
Payne and Shortcliffe - who escaped from Manawatu Prison on Friday - were arrested after the Mitsubishi Galant they allegedly stole during a car-jacking in Wellington on Sunday night was found crashed at Tongaporutu, northeast of Waitara, this morning.
The pair were caught hitch-hiking in the late afternoon on State Highway 3a between Waitara and Inglewood.
Following the other hunt, police arrested a 33-year-old Hamilton man in Normanby, 6km north of Hawera. He had allegedly held up New Plymouth's Treehouse Sports Bar and Cafe on Sunday night with a sawn-off shotgun.
A second man involved in the robbery was still missing tonight and police say he could now be anywhere in the North Island.
Payne and Shortcliffe were high-security inmates at Manawatu Prison but escaped while working in the prison's horticulture tunnel-houses.
Payne, 25, from Taranaki, was serving a nine-year sentence for rape.
Shortcliffe, 26, from Tauranga, had been sentenced to seven years for aggravated robbery.
Corrections Department regional prison manager John Jamieson said the pair were present when inmates were mustered at 3 pm but slipped out unnoticed during the following 45 minutes.
A small hole was cut in the 4.2m steel mesh fence behind the tunnel-houses, allowing the men to crawl through and scale another fence before disappearing.
"It's one place that's really quite strategically chosen because it's a blind spot from the rest of the prison," Mr Jamieson said.
"Almost anywhere else you would be spotted by someone but this is an area where the tunnel houses themselves ... shield it from the sight of regular staff."
A department audit team would now review the prison's security.
Mr Jamieson said it was the first breakout through the prison's perimeter fence since it was built during a $10 million upgrade in 1998.
"It's a very strong fence. It's very hard to imagine anyone having got through it but they have, so we have to make sure those weaknesses are actually identified and have another security review of the fence itself."
Payne and Shortcliffe were believed to have travelled south to Wellington.
Two men matching their descriptions stole a 50-year-old man's car and bank card near a service station in the central city on Sunday night.
That car was found abandoned at Tongaporutu this morning.
Normanby and Hawera residents today awoke to find Armed offenders squad units from Taranaki, Wanganui and Palmerston North patrolling the area and a police helicopter hovering overhead.
Normanby Primary School principal Lynne Wilson said police asked staff to keep the 118 children inside with the doors locked.
Payne's wife, Kylee, told Taranaki's Daily News her husband, whom she married while he was awaiting trial, was innocent and the prison break-out was a cry for help.
"I believe he will only go back into jail for murder or in a body bag. He won't go down without a fight," she said.
Payne was also reportedly upset about the murder of his grandfather, Desmond Payne, in a hotel carpark in Geraldine last July.
The man arrested for his murder was found not guilty on the grounds of insanity.
Armed police remained on alert in Hawera and Normanby tonight while they continued to search for the second armed robber.
Residents were warned to lock their doors and vehicles and to be on the lookout for any suspicious behaviour.
Both Payne and Shortcliffe will appear in the New Plymouth District Court tomorrow morning charged with escaping custody.
Armed police trap robbery suspect and jail escapers
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