California escapees recaptured
SANTA ANA, CALIF.— Two inmates who remained at large after breaking out of a California jail more than a week ago have been arrested, Orange County sheriff’s officials said Saturday.
Jonathan Tieu, 20, and Hossein Nayeri, 37, were in the custody of the San Francisco Police Department, the Orange County sheriff’s department said on its Twitter feed.
Authorities had been hunting for Tieu, Nayeri and a third inmate, 43year-old Bac Duong, in Southern California since they pulled off a brazen jail escape on Jan. 22.
On Friday, Duong walked into an auto repair shop and said he wanted to surrender. He told investigators he had last seen the other two inmates Thursday afternoon in San Jose, shifting the manhunt 640 kilometres to the north.
The three men had all been jailed and were awaiting trial on charges in separate violent crimes. They were held in a dormitory with about 65 other men in the jail about 50 kilometres southeast of Los Angeles.
The men escaped in the early morning hours after cutting a hole in a metal grate and then crawling through plumbing tunnels and onto the roof of a four-storey jail building. They rappelled using a rope made of bed linen. It took jail staff 16 hours to realize the three men were missing.
On Thursday, authorities arrested a woman who taught English inside the jail. Nooshafarin Ravaghi, 44, gave Nayeri a paper copy of a Google Earth map showing an aerial view of the jail compound, 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.
Duong has been held since last month on charges of attempted murder and assault with a deadly weapon. Tieu is charged with murder and attempted murder in a 2011 gang shooting. Nayeri had been held without bond since September 2014 on charges of kidnapping, torture, aggravated mayhem and burglary.