Inmate who walked away from San Diego re-entry facility caught in Carlsbad

A 51-year-old inmate who disappeared from a San Diego re-entry facility Wednesday was found Thursday morning in a Carlsbad hotel, state prisons officials said.

Larry Johnson was last seen in the afternoon by staffers at the Barrio Logan facility where he was living, according to the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, which runs the state’s prisons and re-entry facilities.

Johnson had been given the OK to leave to go to work. But at 10:30 p.m., he had not returned, and staffers learned his GPS device had been tampered with.

About 10:30 a.m. Thursday — 12 hours after officials realized he was missing — he was found in Carlsbad and taken into custody. State corrections officials did not say what led them to the North County hotel.

Johnson was to be taken to Richard J. Donovan Correctional Facility in Otay Mesa.

He was sent from San Diego County to prison in April 2019 to serve a four-year sentence for attempting to use someone else’s identity to gain information.

The crime was his second strike, state prisons officials said.

He was sent to the re-entry facility on Boston Avenue in July and was slated to be released in May 2021 to be supervised in the community.

The idea behind re-entry programs throughout the state is to get soon-to-be released inmates linked to rehabilitative services that can help with a wide swath of issues, including jobs, education and housing.

State officials say most people who disappear from state correctional programs — 99 percent — are caught.