One of three violent inmates who broke out of a California jail on Friday last week surrendered and authorities believe the other two might be 640km north in the San Jose area.
Bac Duong, 43, surrendered in California and told investigators he had been with the other two fugitives, Jonathan Tieu, 20, and Hossein Nayeri, 37, in San Jose on Thursday and they might be headed to Fresno in Orange County, Sheriff’s Department Lieutenant Jeff Hallock said.
“If they are watching, we want them to understand that we are pressing forward and we are coming after them,” Hallock said at a news conference, addressing the escapees directly for the first time. “We will take you back into custody.”
Photo: AP / Orange County Sheriff’s Office
Duong was taken into custody in Santa Ana, where the trio on Friday last week made their brazen escape from the maximum security facility, authorities said.
It is not clear how he got back to southern California from San Jose, but early on Friday Duong contacted a woman he knew at an automobile repair shop just a few miles away from the jail, authorities and witnesses said.
Lee Tran — whose family owns Auto Electric Rebuilders — said Duong came to the shop looking for Tran’s sister, Theresa, and told her that he wanted to surrender.
Photo: AP / Orange County Sheriff’s Office
“He was scared for his life, pretty much,” Tran said. “That’s why he asked one of our people to turn him in.”
Tran said his sister called police and Duong stayed outside, smoked a cigarette and waited for police.
“She was crying her head off,” said her father Trach Tran, who was also there. “Everybody was scared.”
Lee Tran said his sister’s boyfriend knows Duong and federal authorities had come by to speak with her earlier this week because she might have visited Duong in jail.
Shortly after the late-morning arrest, a team of well-armed officers in protective vests swarmed the business.
Tieu and Nayeri are believed to be still together in a white utility van the fugitives stole the day after the escape and could be headed to Fresno where there might be an associate who can help them, Hallock said.
The three men had all been awaiting trial for separate violent crimes at the Central Men’s Jail. They were held in a dormitory with about 65 other men in the jail about 48km southeast of Los Angeles.
The men escaped in the early morning hours after cutting a hole in a metal grate then crawling through plumbing tunnels and onto the roof of a four-story jail building.
They pushed aside barbed wire and rappelled down 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 that showed an aerial view of the entire jail compound, Hallock alleged.
She was booked on suspicion of being an accessory to a felony and was being held pending a court appearance set for Monday.
It was not clear if she had a lawyer.
Ravaghi and Nayeri — both born in Iran — also exchanged “personal and close” handwritten letters, but Hallock could not say if the two were romantically involved.
“It wasn’t the relationship that you would expect between a teacher and an inmate in a custody setting,” he said.
It was not clear why Nayeri was allowed to take Ravaghi’s class because he spoke fluent English.
“Why he was attending that class ... that is very much of a concern for us,” Hallock said.
It also was not clear why jail deputies, who read all inmate correspondence, did not flag the letters.
Ravaghi was working as a part-time English instructor at a local community college and had taken a sheriff’s class on jail rules and how to avoid manipulation by inmates, officials said.
It was the first escape in nearly three decades from the California facility built in 1968 that holds 900 men.
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.
Duong, a native of Vietnam, has been held since last month on charges of attempted murder and assault with a deadly weapon.
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