How did assata shakur escape from prison?

Answer 1

According to an article titled " Assata Shakur The Interview" on the talkingdrum dot com.

In 1979-after giving birth in prison, only to have her daughter taken away in less than a week Assata Shakur managed one of the most impressive jailbreaks of the era. After almost a year in a West Virginia federal prison for women, surrounded by white supremacists from the Aryan Sisterhood prison gang, Shakur was transferred to the maximum security wing of the Clinton Correctional Center in New Jersey.

There she was one of only eight maximum security prisoners held in a small, well-fenced cellblock of their own. The rest of Clinton-including its visiting area-was medium security and not fenced in. According to news reports at the time, Shakur's November 2 escape proceeded as follows: Three men-two black, one white-using bogus drivers licenses and Social Security cards, requested visits with Assata four weeks in advance, as was prison policy. But prison officials never did the requisite background checks.

On the day of the escape, the team of three met in the waiting room at the prison entrance, where they were processed through registration and shuttled in a van to the visiting room in South Hall. One member of the team went ahead of the rest. Although there was a sign stating that all visitors would be searched with a hand held metal detector-he made it through registration without even a pat-down. Meanwhile, the other two men were processed without a search.

As these two were being let through the chain-link fences and locked metal doors at the visiting center one of them drew a gun and took the guard hostage. Simultaneously, the man visiting Shakur rushed the control booth, put two pistols to the glass wall, and ordered the officer to open the room's metal door. She obliged. From there Shakur and "the raiders" as some press reports dubbed them took a third guard hostage and made it to the parked van.

Because only the maximum security section of the prison was fully fenced-in the escape team was able to speed across a grassy meadow to the parking lot of the Hunterdon State School, where they meet two more female accomplices, and split up into a "two-tone blue sedan" and a Ford Maverick. All the guards were released unharmed and the FBI immediately launched a massive hunt. But Shakur disappeared without a trace. For the next five years authorities hunted in vain. Shakur had vanished. Numerous other alleged BLA cadre were busted during those years, including Tupac's step-father, Mutula Shakur. In 1984 word came from 90 miles off the coast of Florida. The FBI's most wanted female fugitive was living in Cuba, working on a masters degree in political science, writing her autobiography, and raising her daughter.

Source: thetalkingdrum dot com