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Second 'Shawshank Redemption' escapee arrested

Authorities in Mexico City captured the second of two inmates who made a daring escape last month from a New Jersey jail, a US marshal said.

The apprehension of Otis Blunt on Wednesday came less than a day after authorities caught his accused cohort, Jose Espinosa, in a basement apartment just more than a kilometer from the jail. Also on Wednesday, authorities revealed that it took guards 20 hours to notice that the inmates had escaped.

Blunt was expected back in New Jersey soon, Marshal James Plousis said. There were no formal extradition proceedings because Blunt has been declared an "undesirable" in Mexico, he said.

Blunt was found by marshals and Mexican authorities at a "US$10-a-night hotel," Union County Prosecutor Theodore Romankow said.

Romankow's office said Blunt and Espinosa used photos of bikini-clad women to hide holes they dug through the cinder-block walls of their adjoining cells in a high-security unit before escaping.

The escape, and Blunt's flight, echoed the plot of the movie The Shawshank Redemption, in which the main character uses posters of women to conceal his escape tunnel and eventually flees to Mexico.

Blunt, 32, was awaiting trial for robbery and weapons offenses at the time of the escape. Espinosa, 20, was awaiting sentencing after pleading guilty to manslaughter in a 2005 drive-by shooting.
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