Police catches prisoner who used bedsheets to escape

Australian police said on Wednesday a prisoner who escaped Australia’s highest security prison by tying bed sheets together had been caught after a car chase.

Stephen Jamieson, 28, serving 12 years for armed robbery, made his jailbreak in broad daylight on Tuesday from the prison in Goulburn in New South Wales about 160 kilometres south-west of Sydney.

“He was able to get out of that exercise yard and then he had a range of bed sheets that he tied together and was able to swing them over the wall to then effect his escape by scaling that wall,” New South Wales Corrective Services Commissioner Peter Severin told ABC News.

“It appears that he also had a pillow [that was] put around his waist and enabled him to make good his escape over the razor wire.”

Commissioner Severin said Jamieson had a history of trying to escape and was put into solitary confinement after a man-made hole was discovered inside a workshop at the prison.

“He was clearly somebody that was in maximum security for all the right reasons and furthermore he was actually segregated in the maximum security section,” he said.

Police said Jamieson was spotted 12 hours later, 20 kilometres away in a stolen car and arrested early Wednesday after a dramatic 100 kilometre police chase.

Embarrassed prison authorities have launched an inquiry into how Jamieson could make such a brazen classic escape from Australia’s highest security prison, which holds serial killers, terrorists and other criminals