4 Delaware Inmates Escape Using Prison Sewer System

Four inmates, including two convicted of murderer and one convicted of rape, cut their way through a steel-reinforced window and escaped through a prison sewer system on December 2, 1986 at the Delaware Correctional Center, the authorities said.

The hunt for the escaped prisoners immediately spread through Delaware, New Jersey and Maryland, officials said.

They were believed to be armed with a shotgun in a car they stole outside the prison.

The Federal Bureau of Investigations was called in to assist, said Cpl. William Eubank, state police spokesman.

The prisoners were discovered missing at a 2 A.M. bedcheck in their medium-security building within the central compound at the prison near this central Delaware community, Corporal Eubank said.

The four men apparently cut through a steel window-frame in the building, climbed outside, then descended through a manhole inside the compound, he said.

Based on the NYTimes article