Po­lice are search­ing for two men who es­caped cus­tody from the St Ann’s Hos­pi­tal yes­ter­day morn­ing.

The men, who were pa­tients in the Foren­sic Ward-27 of the hos­pi­tal, are charged with mur­der and rob­bery with vi­o­lence of­fences.

In­for­ma­tion from the Po­lice Ser­vice and the North West Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty yes­ter­day, stat­ed that at 5.30 am, se­cu­ri­ty per­son­nel at the St Ann’s Hos­pi­tal were con­duct­ing rou­tine checks when they dis­cov­ered that Ever­son Hazel­wood and Joshua Gar­raway were miss­ing.

Around 6 pm, of­fi­cials at the hos­pi­tal re­alised the men had es­caped from the fa­cil­i­ty and con­tact­ed the po­lice, ac­cord­ing to a re­lease from the NWRHA.

The NWRHA added that it has launched an in­ter­nal in­ves­ti­ga­tion to de­ter­mine the cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing this in­ci­dent and will now move to strength­en se­cu­ri­ty pro­to­cols where nec­es­sary.

The TTPS said the mat­ter is un­der in­ves­ti­ga­tion by of­fi­cers from the Bel­mont Po­lice Sta­tion, and ef­forts were un­der­way to lo­cate the es­capees. The TTPS al­so re­mind­ed the pub­lic that har­bour­ing or as­sist­ing an es­caped pris­on­er is a crim­i­nal of­fence.