'Black Dog Strangler' recaptured after escape from secure hospital A convicted killer dubbed the Black Dog Strangler has been recaptured after he escaped from a secure hospital on Wednesday, police said. A manhunt was launched on Wednesday morning after Phillip Westwater, 44, fled St Nicholas hospital. He was being escorted from his ward in the hospital to a restaurant in a separate building - but within the hospital site - when he asked to go to the toilets, changed his clothes and escaped. The hospital is considered a medium-secure unit, and Westwater, who is diabetic, will have undergone a risk assessment before he was escorted by a member of staff, a Northumberland Tyne and Wear NHS Foundation Trust spokesman said. "Patients in receipt of hospital care routinely undertake periods of planned or escorted leave as part of their treatment plans, which are designed to help in their recovery," the spokesman said. Before being granted leave, all patients are rigorously risk-assessed. In the rare event that a patient does go missing, we have agreed protocols in place with our colleagues at Northumbria police to ensure that patients are returned to hospital as quickly as possible. Westwater was detained indefinitely under the Mental Health Act following a pub fight in 1989 in which he left a man paralysed for life after slashing him across the throat with a shard of glass in a pub fight. The following year he strangled fellow patient Derek Williams at Ashworth Hospital, Liverpool, with his dressing gown cord. He admitted manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility, having become convinced his victim had turned into a black dog.