BEIJING (Reuters) - A convicted kidnapper has escaped from a Macau prison in traditional fashion, using a bedsheet and other cloth and abseiling down to the ground, China's Xinhua news agency said on Tuesday.O Man Kai, jailed for kidnapping a racehorse trainer from nearby Hong Kong in 2003, escaped "by tying a bedsheet and cloth together, breaking through the outer-wall ventilation window of his cell and abseiling down from a nearby rooftop of the penitentiary with a red-colored mountaineering rope," Xinhua reported.
O's escape on Monday was only noticed on Tuesday morning during a roll call, Xinhua said.
It did not explain why he needed the sheet when he had the rope, which it said appeared to have been supplied by an accomplice outside the prison.
"Dozens of policemen, including several tracker-dog handlers, combed the hilly woods surrounding the 15-year-old prison complex," Xinhua said, quoting Macau prison director Lee Kam Cheong. "But they only found O's prison garb."
It was the prison's first escape since Macau reverted to Chinese rule in 1999 after centuries as a Portuguese territory.
