One
escaped California inmate surrenders, others may be in San Jose
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[January 30, 2016]
By Dan Whitcomb
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - One of three
inmates who escaped a week ago from a maximum-security jail in Southern
California has been taken into custody after surrendering to law
enforcement, while the other two were believed to be in the Bay Area,
police said on Friday.
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Bac Duong, 43, gave himself up to police in Santa Ana shortly
before noon, Orange County Sheriff Sandra Hutchens told a news
conference.
The other two escapees remained at large on Friday afternoon.
Sheriff's Lieutenant Jeff Hallock told reporters officials believed
Hossein Nayeri, 37, and Jonathan Tieu, 20, were in San Jose.
Carrie Braun, a sheriff's spokeswoman, said Duong apparently
surrendered "because of the pressure that was being put on him by
the general community" during an exhaustive, week-long manhunt.
Duong broke out of the Orange County Men's Central Jail in Santa Ana
on Jan. 22 along with Nayeri and Tieu.
Duong and Tieu are both reputed to be connected with
Vietnamese-American street gangs, and Hallock said Nayeri and Tieu
may have chosen San Jose due to its large Vietnamese population. He
said they may be heading to Fresno next.
Nooshafarin Ravaghi, a community college instructor who taught at
the jail and had befriended Nayeri, was arrested on Thursday on
suspicion of assisting in the escape by furnishing the inmates with
Google Maps information that included overviews of the jail rooftop
and surrounding areas.
Ravaghi and Nayeri had also exchanged handwritten letters outside of
class that were personal in nature, sheriff's office Hallock told
reporters earlier on Friday. Nayeri, the presumed mastermind of
the breakout, was in jail on charges stemming from the 2012
mutilation torture of a kidnap victim.
Tieu was facing murder charges and Duong charges of attempted murder
and assault with a deadly weapon, among other crimes.
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Hallock said it was Duong who on Sunday took what was supposed to be
a test drive in a utility van advertised for sale in south Los
Angeles and never returned.
Authorities say the men made their getaway by cutting through steel
grating inside the jail, climbing through a plumbing conduit to the
roof and lowering themselves four floors with bedsheets to the
ground. Their disappearance went unnoticed for about 16 hours.
Ravaghi is expected to be arraigned on Monday.
In a high profile New York prison break last year, the fugitive
inmates had help from a female prison employee who allegedly had
sexual relations with one of them. She was sentenced to seven years
for her role.
(Reporting by Eric M. Johnson and Dan Whitcomb; Additional reporting
by Sara Catania in Los Angeles and Curtis Skinner in San Francisco;
Writing by Dan Whitcomb; Editing by Tom Brown and Sandra Maler)
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