One of France's most notorious criminals, Rédoine Faïd, has been captured three months after he made an astonishing escape by helicopter from a French prison.
The repeat offender has fascinated the country, as NPR's Eleanor Beardsley reports, and is known there as the "jailbreak king." He's spoken about how his actions are inspired by Hollywood gangster movies like
Scarface.
Faïd had been serving a 25-year-sentence for a botched armed robbery in 2010 that killed a policewoman. And, he had previously escaped from another prison in 2013, that time using explosives.
On Wednesday, Faïd was apprehended north of Paris, near where he grew up. As The Associated Press reported, Paris prosecutor François Molins described during a press conference how officials caught him:
"Molins said the gangster was spotted by police on July 24 in the Paris region alongside his brother Rachid - but the pair managed to escape a high-speed car chase. They abandoned their vehicle in a shopping center parking lot in Sarcelles and fled.
"Fake explosives inside the vehicle and fake license plates added to a growing stack of clues leading to his capture.
"Molins said a major turning point came over the weekend, when police realized that a female accomplice in Creil had 'picked up in her car a person dressed in a burqa whose attitude let them think it was actually a man.' "
"I heard a racket," neighbor Alliou Diallo told
Agence France-Presse. "I saw around a hundred police wearing masks. ... I never thought he could be there."