A Russian prisoner charged with double murder on Tuesday escaped from one of Moscow’s most impregnable jails by breaking a hole in his cell ceiling and climbing to freedom, the prison service said.

In a rare break-out, reportedly only the fourth in two decades from Moscow’s Matrosskaya Tishina prison, Oleg Topalov “escaped through a hole in the cell ceiling that he had made and made his way onto the roof,” prison service spokesman Sergei Tsygankov told the RIA Novosti news agency.

“From the roof he escaped over the main fence,” he added.

It was unclear how Topalov managed to break a hole in the ceiling since cells are searched for banned objects. The only object he could have used was a spoon, a source in law enforcement told the Interfax news agency.

In an unusual move, the federal prison service released pictures of Topalov, 33, a slim man with dark curly hair, asking the public to call with any information.