Escaped Pentonville prisoners at large after using mannequins to trick guards

© Ben Sutherland/Flickr

PRISON BREAK: HMP Pentonville is located on Caledonian Road in Islington, London.

THE Ministry of Justice (MoJ) says that two prisoners have escaped from HMP Pentonville in London after they apparently scaled a 25-foot perimeter wall at the category B facility.

Officers discovered the ploy on Monday, November 4, when they found two homemade mannequins in the prisoners’ beds, with Scotland Yard advised of the breach at 11.44am.

Unconfirmed reports also suggest that the convicts used diamond-tipped cutting tools to slice through their cell bars before going on the run.

The inmates are aged 28 and 31, respectively, and one of them is said to be serving “a very long sentence” according to the BBC, although the MoJ has not named them thus far.

A prison spokesperson said: “Public protection is our top priority and we take escapes from custody extremely seriously.

“We are working closely with the police and are urgently investigating the matter.”

The latest drama follows Sunday’s mass riot at HMP Bedford, and the fatal stabbing of 21-year-old Jamal Mahmoud at Pentonville last month, with the latter incident having occurred on the same wing where the escapees were being held.

Around half of the 200 officers working at the prison passed a vote of no confidence in Governor Kevin Reilly in the aftermath of Mahmoud’s brutal murder, while last year then justice secretary Michael Gove called Pentonville “the most dramatic example of failure” within the HMP prison network.

Pentonville is a Victorian prison which opened in 1842 and currently holds 1,200 adult men, with notable former inmates including Oscar Wilde.

The last man to escape the facility was convicted murderer John Massey, who climbed onto a roof before using a rope made from bedsheets in 2012. He was recaptured 48 hours later.

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