With inmates back in jail, focus turns to how they escaped

This undated photo provided by the Orange County Sheriff’s Office shows Bac Duong, one of three inmates who escaped Friday, Jan. 22, 2016, from the county’s Central Men’s Jail in Santa Ana, Calif. Orange County Sheriff Sandra Hutchens said Wednesday that some arrests have been made in the investigation, but the inmates themselves have not been captured.

Jonathan Tieu, 20, and Hossein Nayeri, 37, were captured just before 9 a.m.in San Francisco, police said. It was involved in prior escapes from the facility, which was built in 1968, said Lt. Jeff Hallock, a sheriff’s department spokesman.

The third convict, 43-year-old Bac Duong, had turned himself in to police on Friday. All three escaped the jail on January 22.

Sean Sebourn, a bike rental agent at the park’s entrance, said he saw Nayeri run by his booth. They chased him down and took him into custody.

The day after the escape, Duong responded to a Craig’s List ad for a white GMC van and stole it during a test drive, authorities said.

Vergel Dalusung, a security officer for the McDonald’s restaurant, said Tieu’s capture was uneventful.

Nayeri fled when police approached the van, Gatpandan said.

About 3 p.m. Friday, the manager said, San Jose police showed up at the Alameda Motel and showed him mug shots of the three escapees, whom he recognized and identified.

He walked up to a Southern California auto shop where a friend works and had her call police.

While there, a woman flagged down the officers to notify them of a suspicious individual and a nearby vehicle that matched the description of a van believed to have been stolen by the escaped inmates and of a suspicious man.

“I think I did a big ‘Whoop!’ in the air”, Hutchens said, describing her excitement about the arrests.

Investigators were still trying to determine why Nayeri, who speaks English and graduated from high school in California, was in an ESL class; Rackauckas suggested inmates who are not native English speakers take such classes to relieve boredom.

She is also an associate faculty member at Saddleback College, according to the Mission Viejo college’s website, and has her own website, noosharavaghi.com. She is being held pending a court appearance set for Monday.

The three inmates did not know each other before being housed in the Orange County jail. She is accused of furnishing the inmates with Google Maps information that included overviews of the jail rooftop and surrounding areas. Hallock said Ravaghi has denied providing Nayeri with any tools used in the escape.

Rackauckas said Ravaghi, who was booked without bail on suspicion of being an accessory to a felony, is now being cooperative. It wasn’t clear if she had a lawyer.

Police had been warned of the escapees’ possible connection to the city, Suhr said in a statement, and officers had been told to be on the lookout for them.

Hutchens also said that several rounds of.

When police went back to investigate the van, parked on Haight Street near Stanyan, they discovered Tieu – who had been held on gang-related murder and attempted murder charges before his escape – hiding inside. Nayeri had been in custody since September 2014, Tieu since October 2013 and Duong since December.