14 DAY TRIAL // Police in Russia's capital city of Moscow are looking for a dangerous and potentially deranged inmate who has escaped from one of the city's oldest prisons.
According to Russia Today, 33-year-old Oleg Topalov of Sochi used only a spoon and made a perfect escape.
He went missing throughout the night and guards discovered that he was gone on Tuesday morning, May 7.
The inmate broke out of Matrosskaya Tishina, a prison facility built in the 18th century that has housed the likes of Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Sergey Magnitsky.
“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,” describes Kristina Belousova, the spokesperson for the Russian Federal Penitentiary Service.
Topalov has been described by prison guards as “mentally abnormal and liable to escape” in the past. He was being kept in a cell along with seven other prisoners. As of yet, there is no news of other escapees from the jailhouse.
Officials believe that he has used the spoon to get through the ceiling, reached an air duct, used the duct to get him to the roof, and jumped off.
Since the prison yard is fenced with barb wire, he would have had to also get past it. A residential neighborhood has been built around the Matrosskaya Tishina jail complex.
“[He] expanded the vent of an air-shaft with the help of some item.
“Using sheets tied one to another he managed to go down the wall, then jump over the fence and run away,” Belousova details.
Topalov has been jailed for a year and a half, while awaiting trial on two murder charges and extra arms dealings counts. Police are looking into the guards' involvement in his successful escape.