Halifax police mistakenly release man before court appearance

Halifax Regional Police are looking for a man they mistakenly released from a cell Friday before a scheduled court appearance.

Rhys Warren Stewart, 50, walked away from police headquarters with the prisoners who had been picked up for being drunk, police said.

"It's an unfortunate case of human error," said Const. Jeff Carr, spokesman for Halifax Regional Police.

"The booking officer was releasing the prisoners who were in the cells overnight for being intoxicated in a public place and inadvertently released this [man]."

Carr didn't provide details. He said an internal police review is underway.

Stewart was arrested on Old Sambro Road just after midnight on a number of outstanding warrants, including one for aggravated assault, and placed in a cell for the night.

He was supposed to be taken to Halifax provincial court in the morning.

All of the charges are from 2006. Stewart also faces charges of theft, fraud, breaking and entering, and possession of a stolen credit card.

Carr said investigators believe Stewart skipped town and had only recently returned.

Police want to hear from anyone with information about Stewart.

"I don't know that he's a danger to the public at large," Carr said. "The violent offences that he's charged with were not random acts.

"That said, anybody who comes across him shouldn't approach him on their own. They should contact police and let us handle it."

Stewart is white, 5-foot-6, 130 pounds, with blue eyes and brown hair.

Escapes and mistaken releases

This is the second incident of a prisoner disappearing from police headquarters in less than three months.

On Aug. 1, a man slipped out of a holding room when officers became distracted by another prisoner, police said.

But there have been a number of mistakes by justice and corrections officials in Nova Scotia in the past year.

The last one happened in September, when a prisoner was supposed to be taken to the jail in Dartmouth after a court appearance but was released instead. It was a week before anyone noticed he was missing.

Justice officials blamed that on a missing check mark on a form.