What's most remarkable about this story is that hours before inmate Lorenzo Pollard broke free from a St. Louis jail last Friday, the jail's corrections commissioner was suspended from his job for failing to pay the facilities bills and, uh, routinely letting inmates escape.

His jailbreak seemed almost fictional, as he fought off more than a dozen correctional officers with nunchucks fashioned from bed sheets and a chair in his jail cell the medium-security facility at 7600 Hall Street.

Dotson said Pollard began using his makeshift weapon about 8:15 p.m. as he was being led by guards to a shower area. As guards called for backup, Pollard climbed to a second tier of jail cells, continuing to swing the nunchucks. At one point, Dotson said, there were about a dozen guards trying to stop him.

Pollard used the nunchucks to break through some glass blocks, then jumped out of the hole he created and scaled two razor and barbed wire fences. Police officers swarmed the area, using search dogs and a helicopter. Pollard was in jail on charges of theft, trespassing, property damage and resisting arrest filed in May.

On July 27, an inmate escaped from the Workhouse by walking through an open gate and jumping the fences. He was captured a day later. Two corrections officers were put on leave because of that escape.

In April, two inmates broke free from the St. Louis Justice Center downtown by crawling through an access panel in the ceiling of the infirmary, then breaking through a window and shimmying down the side of the building with a bedsheet. The escapees were caught later that day.