Inmate accused of double murder escapes from high security Russian jail by digging through his cell's ceiling using a SPOON
A man due to stand trial for murder has escaped one of Russia’s most notorious prisons using a spoon and his bed sheets.
Oleg Topalov, 32, accused of two counts of murder and illegal possession of firearms, broke out of maximum-security Matrosskaya Tishina jail in the early hours of Tuesday.
Topalov, described as ‘mentally abnormal’ by prison staff, used a tablespoon to carve a hole into the ceiling of his cell at the Moscow prison and escaped through the ventilation vent, investigators said today.
Topalov is the fourth man in 20 years to escape from the infamous prison, and the first to break out of a detention centre in the Russian capital in 12 years.
Guards at Matrosskaya Tishina discovered that Topalov was missing from the eight-person cell around 5am Tuesday morning.
'It was established that Oleg Topalov used a spoon to scrape away the cement and brickwork from the wall of the ventilation shaft in his cell,' an investigator told Interfax.
Matrosskaya Tishina opened in 1918 and although it has a reputation as one of the worst prisons in Russia, it is in desperate need of building maintenance, something which authorities say made it easy for Topalov to dig himself out.
‘Because of the building being run-down, Topalov had no difficulty in widening the vent of the air-shaft, through which he got to the prison’s roof,’ Russian Federal Penitentiary Service representative Kristina Belousova told RIA Novosti.
The escapee then jumped from the building’s roof into a neighbouring block before lowering himself to the ground using a rope he made from bed sheets.
Moscow police have mobilised an extensive search, offering a ‘large reward’ for information which could lead to the capture of Topalov, from Sochi near the Georgian border.
Topalov was due to appear in court accused of two counts of murder and illegal possession of firearms, and had been held on remand at Matrosskaya Tishina for a year-and-a-half before his escape
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