Dieting prisoner slips out of gap in cell wall

Dieting prisoner slips out of gap in cell wall

A PRISON inmate in Australia lost a dramatic amount of weight so he could squeezed through a gap in the wall and escape.

Robert Cole, 35, was serving time for sex offences and armed robbery in a prison hospital in New South Wales state when officials noticed he was missing.

Cole weighed about 70 kilograms (154lbs) when he entered prison in February 2003 but lost 14 kg (31lbs) by dieting. He slipped his 56-kilo body through a gap between the bars on a cell window and a brick wall at which he'd been chipping away.

A spokeswoman for Australian Corrective Services said: "Because he's lost a lot of weight, he's a very narrow person, so he squeezed his way through the gap."

Cole avoided the motion detectors and video cameras that monitor the prison grounds at night, then climbed a fence and escaped. It is not known how long Cole's sentence was, or how much time he had already served.