A Vietnamese national who was among three people who escaped from a Southern County jail last week was arrested Friday after he turned himself in, according to Orange County Sheriff Sandra Hutchens. Bac Duong, 43, surrendered to police after approaching a civilian on the street in Santa Ana around noon and said he wanted to turn himself in, Hutchens told reporters in a hurried news conference.
The other escaped inmates, Hossein Nayeri, 37, and Jonathan Tieu, 20, were still at large, she said. They had been held in a dormitory with about 65 other men in Santa Ana, about 30 miles southeast of Los Angeles. The men escaped early Jan. 22 from the Orange County jail after cutting a hole in a metal grate then crawling through plumbing tunnels and onto the roof of a five-story jail building, the Associated Press reported. They pushed aside barbed wire and rappelled down using a rope made of bed sheets.
It took jail staff 16 hours to realize the three men were missing because an assault on a guard delayed an evening head count.Five people described by Hutchens as having "some connection" with the escape were arrested earlier this week.
The FBI and U.S. Marshals Service initially offered a $50,000 reward for information leading to the capture of the three men. The Orange County Board of Supervisors increased the reward to $200,000 on Tuesday.
Authorities say Duong has been held without bond since last month on charges of attempted murder, assault with a deadly weapon and other charges in a gang shooting. Immigration authorities and records indicate he had been ordered deported to Vietnam in 1998 but remained in the country and racked up a lengthy rap sheet.
All three were awaiting trial for violent crimes
Nayeri had been held without bond since September 2014, charged with kidnapping, torture, aggravated mayhem and burglary.Nayeri and two other men are accused of kidnapping a California marijuana dispensary owner in 2012, driving him to a spot in the desert where they believed he had hidden money and then torturing him. The prosecutor in his case drew criticism from her boss when she compared Nayeri to fictional cannibal killer Hannibal Lecter after the escape.
Nayeri, the probable mastermind in the escape, had help from a woman whose English classes he was taking while locked up, authorities allege.He came to know Nooshafarin Ravaghi, 44, during an English as a second language course inside the Orange County jail.
Investigators believe a close relationship developed between the two, who had exchanged handwritten letters of a “personal nature,” sheriff’s spokesman Lt. Jeff Hallock said.
“It wasn’t the relationship that you would expect between a teacher and an inmate in a custody setting,” he said, noting that jail employees go through training about rules and the risk of being manipulated by inmates.
Authorities say Duong stole a van the day after the escape after taking it for a test drive in the only reported sighting of the men since the breakout.
Source: USA Today
Source: USA Today
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