Raccoon gets help with escape at old prison

MANSFIELD (AP) — A masked prisoner, of sorts, got some help with a breakout at the old Ohio State Reformatory in Mansfield.

At the more than 100-year-old prison now operated as a museum, volunteers came to the aid of a raccoon with a plastic peanut butter jar stuck on its head. After the critter was spotted scurrying around the grounds last Sunday night, it bumped into a tree and then climbed up and wouldn’t come down.

The raccoon rescuers used a rope to pull the small tree over so an off-duty Mansfield police officer who volunteers at the reformatory could grab the animal with a snare.

An official with the Mansfield Reformatory Preservation Society says once its plastic prison was cut off, the raccoon made a run for it into the brush.