A Russian inmate awaiting trial at the Preah Sihanouk Provincial Prison on Sunday attempted to flee through the roof of the facility’s health center, then tried to commit suicide when the plan failed, prison director Sam Sophal said Monday.
On Saturday, Roshan Kuvandikov, 31—who was being provisionally detained at the prison on charges of intentional violence—complained of shoulder pain and was sent to stay in the facility’s health center overnight, Mr. Sophal said.
At about 3 a.m. Sunday, Mr. Kuvandikov clambered up to the ceiling of the room—which is located near the prison’s perimeter—and ripped a hole in the corrugated tin, he said. When he attempted to jump off the roof and over the fence surrounding the compound, he fell through the metal and onto the floor, waking a guard posted outside the door, Mr. Sophal said.
But before the guard could reach him, he said, Mr. Kuvandikov used shards of a mirror he broke when he fell to cut both sides of his neck.
“I don’t know why the prisoner…tried to commit suicide. I think because he failed to escape,” Mr. Sophal said, adding that the Russian was being treated for his wounds at the provincial hospital.
Ei Kheang, a judge at the provincial court, said Mr. Kuvandikov was arrested on October 27 for slightly injuring a Cambodian man with a knife during a bar fight.
