Two prisoners escape from Pentonville prison in London



Two prisoners, one of whom was recently found guilty of attempted murder, have escaped from Pentonville prison in London.

The fugitives, who reportedly fooled prison staff by leaving makeshift mannequins in their beds, were named by Scotland Yard as Matthew Baker, 28, convicted two weeks ago of attempted murder, and James Whitlock, 31, who was on remand after being charged with conspiracy to burgle cash machines.

It is understood the pair used diamond-tipped cutting equipment to break through their cell bars before scaling an outer perimeter wall. A male visitor to the prison, who wished to remain anonymous, said he was told the runaways had folded bedsheets into the shape of mannequins to fool staff into believing they were still asleep. A female visitor, who also wished to remain anonymous, said a prisoner had told her the two men escaped through a cell window on the fifth floor. She said it was rumoured they had used bedsheets to lower themselves down. She said: “They cut one of the bars and then they came down through the window. They are assuming that it was probably bedsheets and it was at night.”

It is assumed that the breakout happened during the night and the prison authorities only discovered the mannequins on Monday morning. The two escapees had been held in the same cell in Pentonville’s G wing.

Escapes from inside prisons have become extremely rare in recent years, with only two recorded in 2015-16 and no more than two being recorded in any financial year since 2007-08. But the Pentonville escape comes just two weeks after an escape from a prison in the north-west, adding to the deepening prisons crisis facing the justice secretary, Liz Truss.

The Prison Governors Association said the Pentonville escape marked a new low for the Prison Service as it was “an institutional failure in one of our most core functions – keeping prisoners in custody”.

“The old Victorian prisons are squalid and vermin-infested and governors do not have direct access to the funds to tackle it. Prison cells have been vandalised and prisoners have access to drugs and mobile phones, some delivered by drones,” the PGA said.


How Richard Matt and David Sweat escaped from Clinton Prison

The tunnel through which they escaped


It is the first ever time when prisoners of this maximum security prison were able to successfully attempt an escape.

Their names are Richard Matt and David Sweat (convicted murderers). What they did was cutting through the walls in their cells, scaling a cat walk and coming out through a manhole cover a block away. There were a series of underground tunnels that led from the prison to the manhole.

In order not to reveal their missing they used hooded sweatshirts and other materials to create decoys to fool the guards who run their checks every 2 hours.

The prison officials admit that some tools were used in this creative plot. And these hand tools were obtained within the Clinton facility where many contractors come to do jobs all the time.

Quick escape from jail filmed by surveillance cameras


A man who was making a phone call all of a sudden decides to break out of his jail when he sees an open window. He craws through it and ends up in a prison lobby, then another camera records his fast run out in the street. A guard followed him immediately through the same window.