IF NOT FOR THE QUICK ENDING, THIS WOULD HAVE MADE A GREAT ACTION MOVIE

If Alexei had not gotten himself caught so quickly, his daring prison escape and subsequent crime spree would have made for a great action movie. Apparently, prison escapes by helicopter are not uncommon in Europe.

MURDERER MAKES HOLLYWOOD ESCAPE FROM RUSSIAN PRISON BY CLIMBING ON TO ROPE LADDER FROM HELICOPTER (BUT IS CAUGHT HOURS LATER DRIVING A CAB)
Pilot forced at gunpoint to hover over maximum security prison while convicted killer climbs aboard

By Tom Gardner

Mail Online
March 23, 2012

It started like a plot from a Hollywood thriller.

A convicted murderer is sprung from prison in an audacious daylight pick-up by a hijacked helicopter.

But Russian Alexei Shestakov's bid for freedom ended like an Ealing Comedy when he switched to a taxi.

The 35-year-old – halfway through a 24-year term for murder and theft - was hoisted out of the maximum security penal colony by a rope ladder from under the guards' noses.

His accomplices, a man and a woman, commandeered at gunpoint the Mi-2 helicopter and forced the pilot to fly to the jail, in the village of Sheksna, in Vologda region, 300 miles north of Moscow, and hover while their friend clambered aboard.

Guards fired a number of rounds at the helicopter as it flew away, but without managing to get a crippling shot on target, according to witnesses.

The aircraft, which had been booked for a ‘business delegation’, was later found abandoned by a road on the edge of Vologda. The pilot was discovered bound and gagged, several miles away.

But then Shestakov's luck ran out. The hapless convict switched to a taxi which police say they ambushed not long after the daring jail-break, and only a short distance from the town on Thursday.

His two accomplices are still on the run.

There have been several successful chopper escapes in Europe in recent years including an incident in Greece in 2009.

Greek police were left scouring the country for two convicts who orchestrated a brazen helicopter prison break for the second time in three years.

Vassilis Paleokostas, a bank robber who is among Greece's most notorious convicts, and Alket Rizaj, 34, were picked up by a helicopter that flew over the courtyard of Athens' Korydallos prison in February 2009.

The two had escaped the exact same way from the same prison in June 2006, and had been due to appear in court Monday in connection with that escape.

Three men were also freed from a Belgium jail, in 2009, in similar style.

The convicted armed robbers including one of the most violent men in Europe, escaped when a hijacked helicopter flew into a jail near Bruges. It hoisted repeated offenders Ashraf Sekkaki, Mohammed Johry and Abdel Had Kahjary Mulloul.

Despite their notorious reputations they were not being held in the prison’s high security compound, which is surrounded by netting to confound airborne escape attempts.

Instead the chopper swooped over watch towers and high fencing before coming down in the prison yard.

Armed guards were so astonished that not a shot was fired, or anything done to stop the men jumping aboard.