Police are looking for a jailbird dubbed the “Escape King” after he eloped from prison for a fifth time.

Karl Laubinger, who is known as the “Escape King”, had been in prison at the Santa Fu prison in the northern German city of Hamburg since 2011.

But the 53-year-old reportedly ran off from his minder, a judicial employee, while on an “accompanied” trip outside the prison, at approximately 1pm on Friday, 11th March 2022.

He was reportedly allowed out of the detention facility to go the hairdresser’s and to the bank.

Laubinger reportedly told his minder that he needed to use the toilet and so he was taken to the facilities at the Billstedt central bus station, but instead of going inside and relieving himself, he sprinted off at speed.

The German police launched a manhunt to recapture the Escape King and even deployed a police helicopter. However, at the time of writing, the cops had yet to get their hands on the runaway jailbird.

It is reportedly the fifth time that the prisoner has escaped, with his last escape coming in January 2021.

A spokesperson for the judiciary, named as Dennis Sulzmann, said that a court had “assessed the risk of escape” and “deemed it to be rather low”.

Laubinger was initially jailed for committing robberies and taking hostages. He was jailed for five years and six months for robbery in 2008.

A judicial expert, named as Richard Seelmaecker, 49, said that he suspected that the prisoner was behaving this way simply to be “hailed as the Escape King”, calling his behaviour “incomprehensible”.

He added that this behaviour “must definitely be taken into account in future expert opinions”.