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Accidentally let out of jail

There are a lot of questions, but few answers after an accused bank robber was accidentally released from jail.

Prison officials in Metro Vancouver are remaining tight lipped after Dean Richard Zastowny was recently let out of a pre-trial facility in Surrey by mistake.

The 47 year old, who has a lengthy criminal history that includes violent offences against police, has been free since Saturday.

How or why he was allowed to leave remains a mystery.

Surrey city Counc. Bruce Hayne said the incident is particularly troubling because the pre-trial facility is located in a densely populated residential area in Newton.

BC Corrections, the agency in charge of Zastowny's incarceration, so far has little to say about what went wrong despite repeated requests for information from CTV News.

Police said Zastowny is considered armed and dangerous.

Zastowny's criminal record includes convictions for assaulting a peace officer, uttering threats to cause death or bodily harm, robbery and theft over $5,000.

He was arrested in November in connection with a number of bank robberies in Burnaby and Abbotsford. Few details of the robberies have been shared with the public, but surveillance video from one of them shows a man hopping over a bank counter then holding a knife to a teller's throat.

Zastowny is described as white, 6-1 tall, 215 lbs. with blue eyes, brown hair and tattoos, including a full sleeve on his right forearm featuring a skull and a snake.

Anyone spotting Zastowny is asked to call 911 immediately.

- with files from CTV Vancouver



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