Duo sprung from security van by armed gang ‘a risk to community’

Ryan MacDonald, 20, and Stevie McMullen, 31, were freed by three men, one believed to have been brandishing a shotgun, who attacked the GEOAmey prison van in Salford yesterday morning, Greater Manchester Police said.

The force launched a manhunt, with Chief Superintendent Kevin Mulligan saying the men “represent a risk to the community”.

He singled out McMullen, who was standing trial accused of a string of serious offences, as of particular concern.

“I am concerned about them being on the loose, they are responsible for some serious offences,” he said. “I don’t think they pose a risk unless approached so it’s really important that if anyone sees them they contact us straight away.”

Police later arrested a man and a woman on a nearby estate in Salford, near where a Saab used as a getaway car was found abandoned, he added. The 28-year-old woman was arrested on suspicion of assisting an offender and the 24-year-old man held on suspicion of possessing class A drugs and breaching a court order.

MacDonald and McMullen were en route to Manchester Crown Court from the privately-run HMP Altcourse near Liverpool when they were freed, with a third person in the van carrying on to court, police said.

McMullen was on trial accused of conspiracy to kidnap, conspiracy to commit robbery, conspiracy to commit arson and possession of a firearm, while MacDonald was due to be sentenced for conspiracy to commit robbery.

The van came under attack shortly after 9am in the A57 Regent Road, Salford, a main road into Manchester about half a mile from the city’s Crown Court and Strangeways prison.

One of the men who sprang the prisoners used a sawn-off shotgun to smash the windscreen of the van, Mr Mulligan added.

The Saab was abandoned in Regent Road, near a roundabout at the end of the M602. Three men ran off on to the Ordsall Estate and the other two got on to a motorcycle, later found abandoned in Thurlow Street in Salford Quays.

“It’s very concerning, obviously,” Mr Mulligan told reporters. “We do have in place a major investigation, we are following all lines of inquiry. What I will promise is we will return these people to custody.”

The guards in the ambush were left “very shaken” but uninjured.

Altcourse is run by G4S, the firm behind the Olympics security fiasco, and was the first privately designed, constructed, managed and financed prison in the UK.