Remaining two California inmates back in custody

The last two of three inmates who escaped a maximum-security California jail more than a week ago are back in custody, the Ocean County sheriff announced today.

The weeklong manhunt came to end when Hossein Nayeri, 37, and Jonathan Tieu, 20, were taken into custody on Saturday morning in San Francisco’s park district, the police said.

A teacher at the jail, Nooshafarin Ravaghi, 44, was arrested Thursday and for allegedly providing Google Earth images showing the area around the jail to Nayeri. Inside the van officers discovered Jonathan Tieu hiding, police said.

The three men had all been awaiting trial for separate violent crimes at the Central Men’s Jail.

A manager at the Alameda Motel in San Jose on Friday said he believed all three inmates stayed at his motel on Tuesday and Wednesday, before leaving Thursday morning. She was arrested almost a week after the men ¿ one an alleged killer ¿ cut their way out of the jail and rappelled down an outside wall last Friday.

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 to the ground with bedsheets, authorities said.

“We do not want another escape from an Orange County jail”, she said.

Nayeri, who is believed to have masterminded the escape, has fled prosecution at least twice before.

Bac Duong, 43, was the third inmate who had escaped with Nayeri and Tieu from the jail.

She was one of several people arrested in connection with the escape.

“I think the longer they’re out of custody, the more desperate they become, and that makes them more risky”, Orange County Sheriff Department Lt. Jeff Hallock said Friday. They had been accounted for around 5 a.m. that day and it wasn’t until 16 hours later that authorities noticed their disappearance.

Officers found ammunition but no gun in the van, said San Francisco police. It’s also unclear if she knew Nayeri was plotting an escape. Duong turned himself in Friday.

“At this point we are still proceeding as though the fugitives are in the Bay Area, until proven otherwise”, he said. Duong walked up to a Southern California auto shop where a friend works, had her call police and stood and smoked a cigarette until he was arrested.

Duong was to be tried on an attempted murder charge.

Although only Duong was seen on Saturday with the van, “based on other information we have we feel very strongly that they may still all three be together”, Hallock said.

Ravaghi had developed a “close, personal relationship” with Nayeri, who was a student in one of her classes, the sheriff’s lieutenant said. He faces charges for attempted murder, an ex-felon in possession of a firearm, possession of a firearm, possession of stolen property, vehicle theft, assault with a deadly weapon and shooting into an inhabited home.