Connecticut police are
looking for a man who escaped from a psychiatric unit at the Connecticut Valley
Hospital in Middletown
and who is believed to have burglarized two houses in Ellsworth,
Maine on Monday and rubbed a bank in Massachusetts.
On Saturday, Roy Sastrom, 44, failed to return to the
hospital from a one-hour pass that allows him to go outside on the grounds by
himself, hospital’s officials said, according to the Boston Globe.
The man has a long criminal history including burglary,
extortion and threatening, but he was acquitted of all charges by reason of
mental disease. However, he was committed to the custody of the state
Psychiatric Security Review Board for 40 years.
This is the third time Sastrom escapes the hospital. He also
escaped in 2002 and again in 2006, when he drove to Bath, Maine
before police caught him.
This time, Sastrom took a van from the hospital but he
abandoned it on Winkumpaugh Road.
Then he broke into two homes and stole a pickup truck from one of them. Police
could follow him until late Monday when the navigation system aboard the truck
was disarmed, or the vehicle was destroyed, the police said.
“[Mr. Sastrom] has no history of violence. The way
[treatment] had been going it was evident he needed less restriction. It is
always a balancing act with situations like that, and in this one he did flee,”
Wayne Dailey, representative for the hospital said.
Sastrom was described as white male, about 5’9’’ tall and 165
pounds. He has brown hair, hazel eyes and thick mustache.
Anyone who sees him is requested not to approach the vehicle or
him, just to call 911.
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