KEY POINTS:
Rope made from knotted sheets, a ceiling-cavity belly crawl, a supposedly impenetrable tower and a daring descent down a sheer stone wall and coiled barbed wire.
It's the stuff of prime-time television, but it happened at Mt Eden Prison yesterday.
Remand prisoner Aaron Stephen Forden, 26 and behind bars since January on burglary and aggravated wounding charges, was seen by a member of the public using his knotted-sheet rope to climb down a prison battlement at 6.15am.
The escape was also spotted by prison staff and the alarm raised, but Forden scarpered from the scene on foot. He was still at large last night.
Despite the dramatic nature of his descent, the most confounding part of the escape was not how he got out of the tower, but how he got in, Department of Corrections northern regional manager Warren Cummins told the Herald last night.
The battlement is all but impenetrable, having no accessible doors or windows. Just reaching it was "an incredible act", Mr Cummins said.
"It's not an area that's easily accessed. It's out of bounds."
It appeared Forden had somehow clambered into a concrete ceiling cavity during the remand prisoners' morning wash time in the prison's northern wing. That cavity connected to a small gap in the battlement's wall.
Once inside the tower, Forden would have been confronted by sheer stone walls, Mr Cummins said.
There was no ladder, no staircase, and no other immediately apparent way of reaching the tower's top.
"It would be premature for us to postulate how he got up there. But he has got up internally."
Forden managed this while holding on to about 10 sheets for his makeshift rope.
The prisoners are allocated sheets, Mr Cummins said, but how Forden stockpiled so many, then managed to smuggle them to his escape point, were "good questions" being looked at by the department's inquiry into the escape.
