Fugitive prisoner arrested after month on the run

A criminal who went on the run from an open prison has been arrested.

Daniel Gee left Kirklevington Prison in Stockton-on-Tees on 27 May, where he had been serving an indefinite sentence.

The 44-year-old, from Liverpool, was arrested in the Wigan area by officers from Merseyside Police on Tuesday.

The force said Gee is in police custody and will be returned to prison.

Merseyside Police released images of Gee smiling and wearing a blue vest taken after his arrest.

At the time of his disappearance, the Ministry of Justice confirmed Gee had gone missing from a Category D prison and said it was a "rare scenario".

CCTV images were later circulated of him appearing to board a train from Darlington to Liverpool Lime Street with a woman.

Gee was serving an imprisonment for public protection (IPP) sentence, a jail term introduced in 2005 for serious crimes and persistent criminals but abolished in 2012.

Under an IPP, sentences are indeterminate rather than fixed-term, with a minimum period served in custody before the prisoner is considered for release.

But in some cases prisoners have remained behind bars for many years after their minimum terms have expired.

Gee had been found guilty of two counts of threats to kill and another two of blackmail at a trial in Liverpool in 2009.

He had already admitted conspiracy to possess firearms and ammunition.

The court heard he had previously been the subject of months of police surveillance that recorded him making threats and trying to obtain firearms.

The jury heard he had been shot in the stomach outside a pub in the Anfield area on New Year's Day in 2008.

He went on to make threatening phone calls to the family of the man jailed for shooting him.

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