A South Carolina inmate pulled off a jailbreak so simple it sounds made up, and it was all caught on camera. Surveillance footage from the Chesterfield County Detention Center shows 30-year-old Charles Alexander Dieterich lifting his cell door just enough to jam a pencil into the locking mechanism, popping it open on September 1. From there he calmly walked through the jail's kitchen and slipped out an unlocked door normally used by kitchen staff and trustees hauling trash, before scaling a fence lined with barbed wire to break free of the facility entirely. The whole plan hinged on a decades-old vulnerability in the jail's aging B-Work Camp unit, part of the facility built back in 1972.

Dieterich's freedom did not last long. Deputies tracked him down roughly a mile from the jail on Jones Road about 30 minutes after his escape was discovered, and he reportedly assaulted a deputy before being wrestled back into custody. He was treated for cuts sustained while climbing the barbed wire, then returned to the very cell he broke out of, now facing new charges on top of the vehicle theft and drug distribution case that had him locked up in the first place. Sheriff Cambo Streater says the housing unit will stay under direct staff supervision while the door and its locking mechanism are fully evaluated, calling the escape a serious security failure the department is determined to fix.