complicated simplicity

And you thought Mat Selamat’s escape from Singapore was incredulous, a prisoner actually broke out from a jail by climbing down a rope made up of bedsheets knotted together. It was the most fairytale-like jail break -  an old stone jail tower, a dangling rope of knotted sheets and an empty cell. All under the watchful (probably sleeping) eyes of the guards.

Dangling rope made of sheets marks classic prison breakout in N.Zealand

WELLINGTON (New Zealand) - IT was a scene from a classic prison break: an old stone jail tower, a dangling rope of knotted sheets revealed as dawn broke - and an empty cell.

A guard raised the alarm on Monday when he came to work and noticed the sheets hanging outside the Mount Eden prison in New Zealand’s largest city, Auckland, corrections officials said.

By then Aaron Stephen Forden, who was to be tried soon on burglary and assault charges, was gone.

Forden, 26, apparently climbed down the tower of the prison - built in 1856 and officially listed as a historic site - within clear view of a guards’ watch tower but under cover of darkness, said Corrections Department northern regional manager Warren Cummins.

The bed sheets were ‘tied together and he’s used them to get away,’ Mr Cummins said.

‘I don’t think it’s a joke at all,’ Mr Cummins told National Radio.

‘I think it’s very serious and we’ll want to have a look at how he managed that and … do everything we can to stop it in future.’

Police were hunting for Forden. — AP

He think he’s a princess in a fairytale?

And all these happened in New Zealand, near Auckland.

[via Straits Times Interactive]