AMOS, Que. - Quebec provincial police called on the public on Monday for help finding an inmate who escaped a provincial detention facility in northwestern Quebec.
Dominic Houle, 38, was reported missing from the Amos facility at about 8 a.m., provincial police spokesman Louis-Philippe Bibeau said.
While Bibeau did not give details of the escape, the head of the province's jail guard union says the inmate tricked officers into believing he was in bed before scaling two fences and escaping sometime Sunday night.
Mathieu Lavoie said Houle had been serving a sentence in the community for fraud-related charges, but was being held in a temporary modular building at the facility after breaking his court-imposed conditions.
Lavoie criticized the use of the temporary structures, which he said are generally used to house low-risk inmates when prisons become too crowded.
“In our view, they're cardboard prisons,” he said.
Line Fortin, a spokesperson for the network that includes the Amos jail, said the modular structure that housed Houle was located next to the main jail building and used to house minimum security inmates.
She said Houle had no history of committing violent offences.
Police said Houle is five-foot-seven, weighs about 200 pounds, has a tattoo on his left forearm and may have injuries on his arms and body.
Anyone who sees him is being asked to call police.
