After fugitives’ arrests, focus turns to how they escaped from U.S. prison
SANTA ANA, CALIF.— Now that the three violent inmates who escaped from a U.S. jail are back in custody, the focus will turn to how they were able to saw, crawl and climb their way out of a maximum-security facility in California.
Orange County Sheriff Sandra Hutchens said she was elated to announce the arrests of the final two fugitives Saturday after eight days on the run from the jail she oversees. But the tough work is just getting started to determine and fix the security lapses that allowed the escape.
“Believe me, we will be looking top to bottom on that,” she said. “We do not want another escape from an Orange County jail.”
The last two escapees were caught after a civilian flagged down officers near San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park and pointed out a parked van that looked like one believed stolen by the trio of inmates during the brazen escape. The man also said someone who looked like one of the fugitives was in the area.
Police approached Hossein Nayeri, the suspected mastermind of the jailbreak, and he was captured after a short foot chase. The second fugitive, 20-year-old Jonathan Tieu, was found hiding in the van with ammunition but no gun. He surrendered without incident. A third inmate, Bac Duong, 43, surrendered Friday after walking into an auto repair shop in the city of Santa Ana, Calif., just a few miles from the jail.
Authorities were interviewing the inmates, hoping to fill the many holes about the escape and their week on the run.
The three did not know each other before being housed in the Orange County jail. They were awaiting trial on charges including murder, attempted murder, torture and kidnapping. Duong and Tieu have ties to street gangs that operate in the shad- ows of Orange County’s thriving Vietnamese community.
While behind bars, the three were housed together in a large jail module that held 65 other men, about half of whom were in custody for violent felonies.
Early on Jan. 22, the trio sawed through a metal grate covering a plumbing tunnel, then crawled through piping to reach the jail’s roof. There, they pushed aside barbed wire and used a rope made of bedsheets to rappel four stories to the ground. Jailers did not realize the inmates were missing for 16 hours, an embarrassment for Hutchens that has prompted changes in jail operations, but no firings. The intensive search and investigation produced no tangible results for days and then, on Thursday, authorities arrested a woman who taught English at the jail.
Nooshafarin Ravaghi, a 44-year-old children’s book author, gave Nayeri a paper copy of a Google Earth map that showed an aerial view of the entire jail compound, sheriff ’s spokesman Lt. Jeff Hallock said. She was booked on suspicion of being an accessory to a felony and was being held pending a court appearance set for Monday.
Authorities say she and Nayeri — who both were born in Iran — exchanged letters and had a relationship that was closer than it should have been, but stopped short of calling it romantic. Nayeri is a former Marine who grew up in the Fresno, Calif. area, and authorities say it’s unclear why as an English speaker he was in her class that teaches English as a second language.