Lauren McWatters: Woman jailed after trying to break out of prison with blanket rope
A glam Illawarra mother who tried to escape from a Western Sydney prison with a plan she had seen “in the movies” has copped extra jail time.
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A glam Illawarra mum who tried to escape from a Western Sydney jail with nothing but a few blankets and a rock after “seeing it in the movies” has been jailed.
Lauren McWatters faced Wollongong Local Court on Tuesday, where she was sentenced to three months jail by magistrate Susan McGowan, after pleading guilty to a charge of attempting to escape lawful custody.
According to court documents, the 28-year-old Albion Park woman and another inmate made a sneaky attempt to escape Dillwynia Women’s Prison just days before Christmas last year.
The pair were held in ‘Zone 5’ of the prison on December 16, when they would-be escapees began their mission around 1pm.
McWatters and the other woman were captured on CCTV as they hauled blankets, which court documents said “looked to be tied together” with a “medium size rock” at one end across the prison yard.
The women walked across the yard and approached a “pool fence”, which they both jumped over and entered the “sterile zone” of the complex, according to court documents.
McWatters stood at the bottom of the fence and watched as the other woman tried to climb the outer fence. However, after crawling a few metres up the fence, the woman fell back down.
As the woman walked away from the fence, Corrective Services pounced and ordered them to lay on the ground.
McWatters’ lawyer Graeme Morrison told the court his client wasn’t trying escape from jail completely, but hoped the attempt would see her moved to a new prison.
“Her whole aim was to go to another jail because she’d been at Dillwynnia before and had been bashed,” he said.
“It backfired spectacularly and now she has to be in maximum security without any privileges due to her classification.”
Mr Morrison said while McWatters and her friend used a rock and two blankets as part of their escape plan, neither of them really knew what to do with it.
“They’d seen it in the movies,” he said. “There was no real chance of it happening, it was a futile effort.”
Magistrate McGowan agreed, noting the plan “was doomed to fail”.
“What was the plan once they’d climbed over the wall,” she said. “Digging a tunnel might have been more effective.”
Magistrate McGowan said McWatters sentence needed to deter other inmates from doing the same thing and sentenced her to three months jail.
The three months will commence in December, meaning McWatters will be eligible for releases next year in March.