A hit man who police say gunned down a Peruvian photojournalist in Lima in February, escaped Wednesday with two other inmates from a prison in the country’s capital, daily El Comercio reported
Lindomar Hernandez, alias ‘Puerto Rico,’ escaped from the Lurigancho prison in Lima, where he had been transferred for the day for a court hearing, from the Piedras Gordas prison at Ancon in north Lima. The court hearings are held in an annex at Lurigancho.
Hernandez was arrested after the murder of Luis Choy, a photojournalist with daily El Comercio. Choy was killed in broad daylight outside his home in the middle-class Pueblo Libre district. The murder was allegedly due to a confusing incident regarding the sale of second-hand cars.
The murder came a few days after another brazen, daylight shooting in Lima that resulted in the murder of a businessman just a few meters away from two police stations. The murders led to a public outcry about security in the Peruvian capital, one of the main concerns of Lima’s some nine million residents.
Inmates at Peru’s notorious penitentiary institutions are known to escape often. On New Year’s Eve six months ago, 27 young inmates, including a notorious hit man, escaped from the reformatory known as Maranguita in Lima’s San Miguel district.
