The person concerned may well have been an Illegal Immigrant; but that is not a Capital Offence. If so, he could well have been unaware of the atrocities that had been committed (due to a language barrier) and assumed that he had been discovered and would be deported. He ran.
Certainly the reporting of the Incident has altered significantly. Yesterday, the news programmes were stating that the man was "under observation"(as part of the investigation into the attempted atrocities) when this Incident happened. Today there is no mention of him being "under observation" - just that he failed to stop when challenged.