Child sex offender scaled prison wall at HMP Peterborough

Urbonas was arrested in Peterborough two days after escaping from prison

A convicted child sex offender used gardening gloves and a rope made of face towels to help him escape from prison, a court heard.

Gintautas Urbonas, 52, escaped from HMP Peterborough on 26 January by running ahead of a group being escorted from the gym and scaling the prison wall.

Urbonas was recaptured two days later in the city after an anonymous call to police, which he claimed was from him.

He was jailed for a further 16 months after admitting escape from prison.

Urbonas was near the start of a 12-year sentence for offences including the attempted rape of a child and child abduction.

Prosecuting, Marti Blair told Cambridge Crown Court he had been thinking of escaping for a while and that on 26 January Urbonas had been in the gym where "it had been noted he was wearing gardening gloves when working out".

The court heard he scaled the roof of HMP Peterborough and used a rope made of face towels to escape

The court was shown CCTV footage of Urbonas climbing up against a gate and scaling a "very high" wall using a light, a pipe and a satellite dish.

Ms Blair said that "prison officers assumed he'd just run ahead" and "it would appear they were unaware for quite some time he had gone over the roof".

The court heard that Urbonas, a Lithuanian national, was later found standing by a tree at a house in the city. He then told police it was he who had called them.

Judge Gareth Hawkesworth said: "You say your purpose was to alert the world to the injustice of the sentence that had been imposed on you."

The judge called him a "dangerous man but a resourceful one".