Fugitive’s spin comes to an end
Police in Halkida will today try to discover how a man arrested in connection with several thefts escaped custody yesterday and stole a military vehicle from a marine camp before being recaptured later in the day. Nikos Boutsikas, 31, was arrested in the afternoon in an abandoned house in a village north of Halkida, on the island of Evia. The Hummer military vehicle he stole from the marines was found stuck in snow nearby. Boutsikas had been in custody at Halkida police station awaiting his trial. Shortly after 1 a.m., he asked a police guard to allow him out of his cell so he could change into clothes his relatives had brought. Instead, he escaped and headed for the nearby marine camp. He jumped into a Hummer and drove off after telling a guard he was going to rescue someone who had been snowed in. Authorities were alerted to the fugitive’s whereabouts when a bakery owner from Artaki called police to inform them that a military vehicle had scraped another car after the driver had stopped at his store to buy a cheese pie.
