MONTREAL: Two prisoners staged a daring escape from jail in eastern Canada using a hijacked helicopter, but one of the convicts was swiftly re-arrested while the other appeared to have been cornered by police, authorities said Sunday.
Sunday’s incident marked the first time that a helicopter has been used in a jailbreak in the French-speaking Canadian province of Quebec.
Police said two accomplices working from outside the Saint-Jerome prison near Montreal had hijacked a helicopter, forced its pilot to hover over the jail and, using a rope ladder, picked up Benjamin Hudon-Barbeau and Danny Provencal from a prison rooftop.
The helicopter and its pilot were found some time later in Mont-Tremblant, according to the police. The pilot was unharmed but taken to hospital suffering from shock.
Quebec Provincial Police said they swiftly detained Hudon-Barbeau, 36, who appeared to have been injured, along with his two outside accomplices. — AFP