By Eric King-
A man involved in a gang that carried out a string of armed raids, including one at a Bradford jewellery shop has escaped from prison.
Police are appealing for information to trace convicted 28 year old armed robber James Beeston who escaped from prison in Cleveland earlier this week.
Beeston was jailed in 2013 for a number of armed robberies, including a £100,000 robbery at the Gold Shop in Wakefield Road, Dudley Hill, which saw three masked men use a machete, sledgehammer and baseball bat to rob the store. Seven armed robberies were committed during the spate of offences and £210,000 of cash or goods were stolen. Five men were jailed over the series of burglaries in which Beeston admitted two charges of conspiracy and was jailed for ten years in November 2013. He is described as 5f 8 inches tall with fair/brown hair. Cops believe he may be in Leeds but are uncertain about his whereabouts.
The escape from prison heaps further embarrassment on a system that is not without enough experience when it comes to prisoners escaping from prison. Pearse McAuley and Nessan Quinlivan, were both members of the provisional IRA when they escaped from Brixton prison in South London after subduing one of the guards and scaling the walls. The pair were awaiting trial on charges in relation to a suspected plot to assassinate a former brewery company chairman, Sir Charles Tidbury.
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John Massey, one of the Uk’s longest serving prisoners escaped from Pentonville prison in North London hid in the prison gym and climbed unto the roof and scaled the wall using a makeshift rope fashioned from netting. 64 year old Massey at the time was serving a life sentence for shooting dead doorman Charlie Higgins with a sawn off shotgun at the Cricketers pub Clapton, East London, in 1975.He was eventually caught in Kent 48 hours later. It was not Massey’s first escape. In April 1994, he broke out of Surrey’s Coldingley prison and fled to Spain before being returned to custody.
Escapes from prison should be none existent if tight security plans are in place. When dangerous criminals escape prison, it puts a huge risk on the safety of the public just because somebody has not done their job properly.
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