Forum Topic

That escapee

“Chiswick residents ask why it took so lo long to find Daniel Khalife”, shouts your headline. Really? I was a little inconvenienced by helicopters through the night but I never asked myself why it was taking anyone so long to find him. What’s your evidence? Or are you simply making a mountain out of something smaller than a molehill?

Beryl Wall ● 1104d14 Comments

Those asking have probably not played hide n seek.

Jan Porter ● 1104d

The question arises because there were lots of reports from people in Chiswick about him being in the area from first thing Friday morning but the police still seemed to think he was in Richmond and appeared to have discounted them. When they finally realised he might be here, late on Friday, he may already have left. To be fair to the police they were probably getting calls about hundreds of sightings particularly with a big reward offered but from the outside it looks like the operation was over-centralised.

Felicity Caborn ● 1103d

Either way it proved a welcome distraction from crumbling concrete schools.It's all about attention span, I mean with schools falling down around our ears and ... ooh look, a parrot!

Chris Blackwell ● 1103d

He was seen at Strand on the Green again on Friday night, having been reported to have been there Thursday evening/Friday morning.In my opinion it's at least an interesting question to ask why he hadn't been caught sooner...

Gee Smith ● 1103d

Why don't you post with your full name?

Brian Coyle ● 1103d

Brian as I mentioned on another thread , my posts started coming up with just Maggie. I hadn’t changed anything so perhaps there’s a glitch in the system.

Maggie Dodge ● 1102d

I read a report in the Mirror about the man in Chiswick who believed he spotted Daniel Khalife on Friday morning. He says he tried to get through to the police on the non-emergency number and gave up only contacting him later when he told others and urged them to do so. The police had been quite clear that people should call 999 after any sightings.

Diane Brown ● 1102d

I was just looking again at the timeline of events on this manhunt. The police announced they were focusing their search on Chiswick at 10.15am on Saturday when I was in Chiswick House Gardens and there was zero police presence there. Daniel Khalife was detained less than half an hour later. There is a quote from someone in an article on the Ealing version of this site which speculates the police may already have been onto him but were trying to lull anyone planning to make contact with him into a false sense of security.

Felicity Caborn ● 1101d

An interesting angle on the story. Perhaps though there is a simpler explanation. The police raided a house in Richmond on Friday night which was presumably the home of the person who provided him with a change of clothes, a bike (disappointingly for some not a Lime bike) and a phone. They probably learned the phone number at that stage but the fugitive was probably keeping it switched off most of the time. He may have turned it on Saturday morning and that explains how the police were able to redirect the search so quickly.

Jeremy Parkinson ● 1101d

You may well be right. It might also explain why they didn't respond initially to the reports about him being in Chiswick but only started to really seriously search in the evening after the raid. They would have seen the last location of the phone was in Chiswick but he must have switched it off some time during the day and it was only when he switched it back on that they released he was elsewhere.

Felicity Caborn ● 1101d

Think they have to wait until they are in a safe area where none of thegeneral public will come to any harm before they make the arrest.

Janice Evans ● 1101d

That could well be true although chances are he stuck to the towpath rather than cycling in built up areas. The spot where they grabbed him is one of the few places in that section you can drive a car close by.

Felicity Caborn ● 1101d

The timings are hard to follow. It takes at least an hour to cycle between Chiswick Mall,  where the guy was supposed to have been seen sometime before 10.15, and the canal at Northolt where he was caught at around 10.45 - and even longer if he’d cycled up the canal from, say, Brentford. The Chiswick sightings could have been mistaken, despite attracting hundreds of police, while as others have suggested, they could already have had information that led a small group of plain cloths police to the canal bridge at Northolt.

Peter Evans ● 1101d

I was walking around Chiswick House Gardens and by the river at 10.15am on Saturday morning and there was zero police presence. Taking on board what people have said on this thread, I think the most likely timeline is that on Friday evening they raided the house in Richmond and found out the number of the phone he was using. This pinged by the river near Pumping Station Road very early on Saturday morning maybe at 3am. The search team moved to the area but failed to find him and he must have turned off the phone when he realised it was leading the police to him. He then made away from the area before dawn and turned on his phone again before 10am which made them realise that he was in Northolt.The situation is confused slightly by the announcement around the same time that they were focusing on Chiswick but  it was a fast developing situation and the priority wasn't going to be that the comms team were up to date or possibly it was a ruse to flush out any accomplices.

Felicity Caborn ● 1100d