Hulking ‘Spiderman’ prisoner who escaped from NYC hospital by rappelling down side of building is still on the lam
The hulking “Spiderman’’ prisoner who escaped from a Manhattan hospital Wednesday — by rappelling down the side of the building using bed sheets and then fleeing in a taxi — is still on the lam, authorities say.
“It’s embarrassing — you see the size of that guy?” a law-enforcement source told The Post on Friday.
Yenchun Chen, 44 — who is around 6-foot-3 and weighs about 250 pounds — was able to somehow make the risky broad-daylight escape from Mount Sinai Beth Israel Hospital in Gramercy Park in Manhattan on Wednesday afternoon.
He was tracked to somewhere in New Jersey on Thursday, authorities said.
On Friday, investigators checked out a few possible addresses where they thought the escapee may have been hiding out – but wound up chasing their tails because he was nowhere to be found, law-enforcement sources said.
Chen, who was arrested July 31 for criminal possession of a controlled substance, had been hospitalized Aug. 4 when he experienced a cardiac issue, according to a DOC rep and sources.
A person in scrubs then approached Chen at the hospital around 4:30 p.m. Wednesday and told him they were going to bring him into the shower, sources said.
Inside the shower, Chen tied up some sheets and used them to descend from the fifth-floor window to a roof below, sources said.
He then climbed a ladder down to the street and hopped into a yellow taxi cab and took off southbound on Second Avenue, police and sources said.
In addition to his hulking figure, the fugitive was also described as having brown eyes and black hair, with tattoos on his left arm and left hand.
Hours after the escape, police released photos of Chen as he was last seen fleeing the hospital. He was wearing a blank white T-shirt and tan pants. He also appeared to still have a hospital bracelet on his wrist.
Anyone with information on Chen’s whereabouts is asked to call the NYPD’s Crime Stoppers Hotline at 1-800-577-TIPS (8477).
In a similar case in Pennsylvania last month, suspected killer Michael C. Burham escaped the Warren County Prison using a rope fashioned out of bed sheets.
The army veteran and self-taught “survivalist” was considered “armed and dangerous” as more than 200 federal, state and local officers from 15 agencies searched for him.
He was taken into custody after a massive nine-day manhunt, authorities said.
In the Big Apple late last month, Rikers Island inmate Bokeem Jones, 28 — who was locked up on assault charges — swiped an officer’s uniform from a jailhouse gym and disguised himself as a guard to escape.
The assault suspect’s escape plan was short-lived, though — he nabbed walking out the door, officials and law enforcement sources said.
Back in May, Joseph King, 21 — busted on domestic-related grand larceny and assault raps — also wriggled out of his handcuffs as the NYPD brought him to Brooklyn Central Booking, cops said.
He then ran off into the Hoyt-Schermerhorn Street subway station, police said.Online records show he was arraigned last month on escape charges, but the circumstances of his rearrest were not immediately known.