CANBERRA, Australia: A 64-year-old fugitive walked into a Sydney police station to give himself up almost 30 years after he used a hacksaw blade and bolt cutters to escape from prison, police said on Wednesday.
Darko Desic decided to go back to prison because Sydney’s COVID-19 lockdown made him jobless and homeless, media reported.
Desic surrendered at Dee Why Police Station at Sydney’s fashionable northern beaches on Sunday morning and was denied bail when he appeared in a downtown court on Tuesday charged with escaping from lawful custody in 1992, a police statement said. The charge carries a potential seven-year prison sentence.
Sydney’s lockdown, which began in June, had cost Desic his cash-in-hand work as a laborer and handyman, unnamed police sources told Sydney’s The Daily Telegraph and Australian Broadcasting Corp.
“He slept on the beach on Saturday night and said: ‘Stuff it, I’ll go back to prison where there’s a roof over my head,’” a source told the newspaper.
Desic was 35 when he escaped from a century-old prison in Grafton, 620 kilometers north of Sydney, over the night of July 31-Aug. 1, 1992.
Police allege he used tools including a hacksaw blade and bolt cutters to cut through his cell window bars and a perimeter fence.
He had served 13 months of a three-and-a-half-year sentence for growing marijuana.
Born in the former Yugoslavia, Desic told police he escaped because he thought he would be deported once he had served his sentence, the newspaper reported. He feared he would be punished for failing to do his compulsory military service in his former country, which has since broken into several nations.
Desic told police that he had spent his entire time at large at Sydney’s northern beaches in the suburb of Avalon, and according to the newspaper, had never come to the attention of police in that time.
Desic maintained a low profile but was once mentioned on “Australia’s Most Wanted,” a true crime TV program that ran for a decade until 1999, after someone reported seeing him at Nowra, 190 kilometers south of Sydney.
Beach boy no more: COVID-19 forces Australian fugitive to give up seaside life
https://arab.news/gtbuk
Beach boy no more: COVID-19 forces Australian fugitive to give up seaside life
- Darko Desic spent his entire time at large at Sydney’s northern beaches while at large
- But he decided to go back to prison because the lockdown made him jobless and homeless
Harry Styles announces first album in 4 years, ‘Kiss All the Time. Disco, Occasionally’
- It follows the critically acclaimed synth pop “Harry’s House,” which earned the former One Direction star album of the year at the 2023 Grammy Awards
- “Kiss All the Time. Disco, Occasionally” will contain 12 tracks and is executive produced by Kid Harpoon
NEW YORK: In this world, it’s just him: Harry Styles has announced that his long-awaited, fourth studio album will arrive this spring.
Titled “Kiss All the Time. Disco, Occasionally” and out March 6, the album is Styles’ first full-length project in four years. It follows the 2022, critically acclaimed synth pop record “Harry’s House,” which earned the former One Direction star the top prize of album of the year at the 2023 Grammy Awards.
In a review, The Associated Press celebrated “Harry’s House” for showcasing “a breadth of style that matches the album’s emotional range.”
On Instagram, Styles’ shared the cover artwork for “Kiss All the Time. Disco, Occasionally,” which features the 31-year-old artist in a T-shirt and jeans at night, standing underneath a shimmering disco ball hung outside.
According to a press release, “Kiss All the Time. Disco, Occasionally” will contain 12 tracks and is executive produced by Kid Harpoon. The British songwriter and producer has been a close collaborator of Styles’ since the beginning of his solo career, working on all of his albums since the singer’s 2017 self-titled debut.
“Kiss All the Time. Disco, Occasionally” is now available for preorder.
It is also Styles’ first project since his former One Direction bandmate Liam Payne died in 2024 after falling from a hotel balcony in Argentina.
