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Dominoes, Toothpaste Used In Attempted Jail Break

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Feb 28, 2008 2:27 pm US/Pacific

Dominoes, Toothpaste Used In Attempted Jail Break

MERCED COUNTY (CBS) ― Two inmates from a Central California prison escaped from their cell using a little toothpaste, paper towels, a Monopoly game and dominoes.  But that's as far as they got.

A worker doing routine maintenance in a corridor behind the inmates' cell foiled their escape plan when he saw an inmate stick his head out a hole where a metal vent should have been.

The Merced County Sheriff's department says 45-year-old Donald Stephenson and 26-year-old Benjamin Crosby used a piece of metal to scrape and remove a metal grate in their cell. 

The two then made a replica of the vent using paper towels stuck to a piece of sheet attached to the lid of Monopoly board game box.  Deputies believe the two used toothpaste as the 'glue' to stick them all together.  To simulate the holes in the grate, the inmates apparently melted down dominoes and used the black liquid as ink.
Deputies say that although Stephenson and Crosby apparently had access to the enclosed utility corridor behind their cell for about a week, they would have had to get past four steel doors and video surveillance before they could get outside.

Both now face additional charges of escape and conspiracy.  

Stephenson is one of three inmates that escaped from the John Latorraca Correctional Facility earlier this year and was recaptured. Crosby is in jail awaiting trial for a homicide he's suspected of committing in 2005 in Santa Nella.

(© MMIX, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)

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© MMIX, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.