EL CHAPO? OUR NOT-SO-GREAT ESCAPE CON IS..
had been used to remove two window bars. They also found a makeshift rope of bed sheets.
Both men have been moved out of the jail while police investigate.
Scottish Prison Service bosses have also started their own probe.
Ballard has been transferred to Edinburgh’s Saughton prison while Snowdon – on remand for an alleged armed robbery – is being held in Glasgow’s Barlinnie.
A source said: “The fact that Ballard didn’t get out of his cell is down to luck. This is a really serious security breach.
“He had managed to get hold of a saw and created a big enough hole for a man to get through.
“He had also been saving up material for a makeshift rope. It was obviously a long time in the planning. It’s like the plot of a film.
“There was a fight between Ballard and Snowdon which got the guards’ attention.”
Ballard was jailed for 20 months alongside his twin brother Danny last October for his part in a nationwide heroin ring.
Snowdon, from Durham, is held in connection with a raid on a bank in Langholm, Dumfriesshire, last December.
HMP Dumfries was described as the safest prison in Scotland in a 2015 inspection report.
Jail escapes are rare in Scotland with most bids happening when inmates are at low- security facilities or hospitals. In August last year, a custody officer was knocked out as Anthony Ferrie, an inmate at Addiewell in West Lothian, fled St John’s hospital in Livingston. He was arrested two weeks later in Glasgow.
Killer George McGeoch escaped after handcuffing two Reliance guards and locking them up in their prison van during a hospital visit from HMP Dumfries in 2008. He had threatened the escort
Sunday Mail
officers with a fake weapon but was caught the next day after showing a shop assistant his picture in a newspaper.
The SPS confirmed an incident had occur red which was subject to a police and internal nvestigation.
A police spokesman said: “We can confirm that police responded to a request for assistance from the Scottish Prison Service in relation to an incident that occurred within HMP Dumfries on March 26. An investigation is under way.”