British prison escapee caught because he went out to buy Call of Duty

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Should have stayed home and downloaded it.

After escaping Spring Hill Prison in Buckinghamshire on November 28 last year, Clint Butler, who was serving a 17-year sentence for crimes including robbery and firearms offences, laid low successfully until he left the house with a friend to score a copy of Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War.

Butler was stopped by police on the street in Birmingham and asked why he was out during a pandemic, and replied: "I've come to get the new Call of Duty because I can't sit around in lockdown." While one of the officers explained that Butler and his companion had been stopped because they clearly turned around and tried to walk away after seeing the police, Butler kicked the officer and attempted to flee. As video of the event posted by West Midlands Police shows, he immediately fell over and was accosted.

Butler has since returned to prison, with an extra 13 months added to his sentence for the escape, and six months for assaulting the police. According to Birmingham Police Superintendent Nick Rowe, "Quite why he decided to risk being returned to prison by making the idiotic decision to come into town during lockdown with a friend to buy a video game will remain a bit of a mystery."

Cheers, Kotaku.

Jody Macgregor
Jody Macgregor
Weekend/AU Editor

Jody's first computer was a Commodore 64, so he remembers having to use a code wheel to play Pool of Radiance. A former music journalist who interviewed everyone from Giorgio Moroder to Trent Reznor, Jody also co-hosted Australia's first radio show about videogames, Zed Games. He's written for Rock Paper Shotgun, The Big Issue, GamesRadar, Zam, Glixel, Five Out of Ten Magazine, and Playboy.com, whose cheques with the bunny logo made for fun conversations at the bank. Jody's first article for PC Gamer was about the audio of Alien Isolation, published in 2015, and since then he's written about why Silent Hill belongs on PC, why Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale is the best fantasy shopkeeper tycoon game, and how weird Lost Ark can get. Jody edited PC Gamer Indie from 2017 to 2018, and he eventually lived up to his promise to play every Warhammer videogame.