Escaped prisoner arrested after a month on the run

A criminal who escaped from an open prison has been arrested.

Daniel Gee left Kirklevington Prison in Stockton-on-Tees on May 27, where he had been serving an indefinite sentence.

The 44-year-old, from Liverpool, was arrested in the Wigan area on Tuesday by officers from Merseyside Police.

The force said Gee is in police custody and will be returned to prison.

Merseyside Police released pictures of Gee smiling and wearing a blue vest, taken after his arrest.

At the time of his disappearance, the Ministry of Justice confirmed that Gee had gone missing from a Category D prison and said it was a “rare scenario”.

CCTV footage was later released of him appearing to board a train from Darlington to Liverpool Lime Street with a woman.

Gee is serving a Public Protection Imprisonment (PPI), a prison term introduced in 2005 for serious offenders and persistent offenders but abolished in 2012.

Under an IPP, sentences are indeterminate rather than fixed-term, with a minimum period of incarceration before the inmate is considered for release.

But in some cases, inmates have remained behind bars for many years after their minimum terms have expired.

Gee was found guilty of two counts of threatening to kill and two counts of blackmail at a trial in Liverpool in 2009.

He has already admitted conspiracy to possess firearms and ammunition.

The court heard he had previously been the subject of months of police surveillance which recorded him making threats and trying to obtain firearms.

The jury heard he was shot in the stomach outside a pub in the Anfield area on New Year’s Day 2008.

He continued to make threatening phone calls to the family of the man jailed for shooting him.

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