STERLING, COLO. -- Colorado's top prison official says an inmate escaped from a maximum security prison by grounding himself and crawling under an electric fence.
State corrections chief Ari Zavaras told Denver's KUSA-TV that Douglas Alward used a homemade ladder to scale one fence and devised a way to bypass an electric fence that will stun someone on first contact and has enough electricity to kill anything that touches it twice.
Zavaras declined to say how Alward grounded himself.
The 48-year-old Alward was serving time for attempted murder, assault, kidnapping and burglary when he escaped from the Sterling Correctional Facility in northeastern Colorado Aug. 22.
He surrendered three days later at a home near Yuma, where he held a woman hostage for a couple hours.
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