Jan. 26--Orange County sheriff's officials said Tuesday that they were "extremely troubled" by the amount of time it took deputies to realize three men charged with violent crimes had escaped from a Santa Ana jail complex last week.
Staff at the Men's Central Jail did not realize the escapees -- Jonathan Tieu, 20; Bac Duong, 43; and Hossein Nayeri, 37; had busted out of the complex until 9 p.m. on Friday, nearly 16 hours after they made their way from their fourth-floor housing to a roof, where they rappelled to freedom. In recent days, the Sheriff's Department has been heavily criticized for the time lapse, and for the decision to house men charged with crimes ranging from torture to murder in dormitory style housing, rather than in individual cells.
"The preliminary investigation into the escape has caused the sheriff concern as to some of the jail inmate count practices and how they were conducted," said Lt. Jeff Hallock, a department spokesman. "The sheriff is extremely troubled by the time it took the staff to determine the three inmates housed in a maximum-security jail were unaccounted for. Immediate steps have been taken to address that specific concern."
Hallock did not take questions during the seven-minute press briefing and did not say what specifically has been done to address concerns. The Sheriff's Department has also conducted a "roof-to-basement" check of the entire jail in the wake of the escape, he said.
Orange County jail staff only conduct two physical checks of inmates each day, a fact that corrections experts said was concerning.
Sheriff's officials were less receptive to criticism of their decision to house Tieu, Duong and Nayeri in a dormitory setting. Corrections officials in Los Angeles County and at the state level have said they would have detained prisoners accused of such crimes in individual cells, limiting their freedom and movements, and prisons experts have also openly questioned Orange County's policy on inmate classification.
Hallock, however, said half of the inmates housed in the section of the jail where the escape occurred are accused of violent crimes, and defended the practice of holding such prisoners in dorms.
"Each of the three inmates were housed appropriately in a maximum security jail," he said.
Hallock's comments came as new questions about outdated surveillance measures in Orange County's jails came to light Tuesday. A review of Orange County Grand Jury reports shows that the advisory panel has been calling on the Orange County Sheriff's Department to update "antiquated" surveillance systems at all of its jails since 2009.
Due to budget constraints, however, upgrades did not begin until last year, the reports said.
"After touring all jail facilities, the Grand Jury surveyed the video systems at each jail, which range from severely outdated VHS tape technology, to touch screen operations. Each jail has a different system," the panel wrote in its 2013-14 report. "This Grand Jury again found that all jails were lacking adequate video monitoring equipment to protect both the inmates and the staff."
"Recommendations by the previous six Grand Jury reports have not changed this fact," the report continued.
The Sheriff's Department launched a project to upgrade its camera system at all county jail facilities last year, with an approved budget of nearly $11 million, the reports show. At least 1,500 cameras are to be installed as part of the plan.
Hallock said the upgrade process was ongoing at all jails, but he declined to elaborate. It was unclear if the portion of the Men's Central Jail that housed the fugitive prisoners had working surveillance cameras.
Orange County Supervisor Todd Spitzer joined the criticism on Tuesday. Though he urged people to focus on capturing the suspects, he said an internal review was needed to determine how they escaped.
"We were all scratching our heads. How on earth did this happen?" he asked.
Hallock also acknowledged Tuesday that the facility's age may have played a role in the escape. Inmates are often allowed to access the roof where the three men completed their daring breakout for outdoor recreational activities, he said. Hallock described that as "one of the many design flaws" in the aging lockup.
Orange County's more modern jails do not allow inmates any access to the roof, according to Hallock.
On Tuesday, the U.S. Department of Immigration and Customs Enforcement confirmed that Duong, a Vietnamese citizen, was ordered deported from the country in 1998 but managed to stay by repeatedly appealed the ruling.
Duong entered the country legally in 1991, the agency said in a statement. Immigration officials did not say why he was ordered to leave the country. His appeals were exhausted in 2003, the agency said, and Duong was taken back into custody. He was released the following year on an order of supervision; the agency did not say why in its statement.
Under a 2008 accord, Vietnam agreed to repatriate citizens who entered the U.S. illegally after 1995, but Duong came here four years earlier.
In the decade since his release from immigration custody, Duong was convicted of second-degree burglary, reckless evasion of police and a drug offense. Immigration officials filed a detainer request with the Sheriff's Department in 2014, based on his felony convictions.
In 2015, Duong was charged with attempted murder in connection with a Santa Ana shooting, landing him in the Men's Central Jail.
The escapees were able to gain a 16-hour head start on law enforcement because the jail conducts only two physical counts of inmates each day, one at 5 a.m., the other at 8 p.m. Investigators believe the three men launched their escape shortly after the 5 a.m. check. The escape went undetected until 9 p.m., after the nighttime check was delayed by a jailhouse brawl.
Investigators believe the brawl was staged to help cover the trio's escape.
On Monday, police called on the local Vietnamese community to aid in the search. Orange County sheriff's Lt. Dave Sawyer, who is leading the investigation into the escape, said it was possible the trio was hiding somewhere in the area.
Tieu is a "documented Vietnamese gang member," and the jail is only a few miles from the Little Saigon section of Westminster and Garden Grove.
The Orange County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday also voted to add $150,000 to the reward for information leading to the escapees' capture, bringing the total to $200,000. Spitzer said he hoped the increased reward would prompt someone to turn the fugitives in.
"You have $200,000 on the table, people start thinking differently," he said. "You cannot put a figure on public safety."
The inmates were discovered missing Friday from a section of the Santa Ana jail known as Module F, a fourth-floor dormitory where 68 inmates sleep in bunk beds rather than in individual cells.
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In a series of reports in arrest warrants filed Monday in Orange County Superior Court, county sheriff's deputies laid out the early stages of their investigation.
According to the documents, jail staff first realized something was wrong around 8 p.m. during a nightly count of inmates that came up three short. The reports don't mention a disturbance at the jail that sheriff's officials have said delayed completion of the bed check until about 9 p.m.
After identifying the missing men as Tieu, Duong and Nayeri, deputies checked the inmates' schedules to make sure they hadn't been in court that day or been left behind in a visitor area. They also checked whether the inmates were in classes offered at the jail.
With no leads, deputies performed a second head count, confirming the men were missing.
At 8:45 p.m., deputies notified their supervisors and began a wider search of the five-story facility.
Crews began moving cell to cell in the 68-inmate section known as Module F, where Tieu, Duong and Nayeri had been.
During the sweep, deputies searched each cell and verified every inmate's identity. They also began interviewing possible witnesses, according to the affidavit.
Seven inmates told deputies that they saw Tieu, Duong and Nayeri during the jail's 5 a.m. head count. Each inmate said he went to sleep after the check and never saw them again.
As teams checked every cell, other deputies scoured the building's roof and system of tunnels, according to the warrant.
Sheriff's Department officials have said the escape likely began with the inmates cutting through a metal screen in their fourth-floor cell. This gave them access to a plumbing tunnel, but according to the warrant, deputies discovered that that tunnel would quickly lead the escapees to a ventilation shaft.
A deputy who had been searching the plumbing tunnel wrote that he found the shaft's security bars had been cut away.
About two feet below the shaft's entrance was a white bed sheet tied into a sling, with another sheet tied to more security bars, according to the affidavit.
"This was used as a way for the inmates to pull themselves up into the vent," one deputy wrote.
Once inside the shaft, the escapees had to remove multiple "ventilation louvers," or shutters, before they reached a trap door leading to the outer edge of the roof, according to the reports. That area is outside a security gate that keeps inmates in a recreation area.
The reports in the warrants say the escapees "sawed" through some of the security bars but make no mention of any tools they may have used or where they may have gotten them.
Once atop the jail, the inmates cut barbed wire from the rooftop's edge and used tied-together bed sheets to rappel to the ground, deputies wrote.
Around 10:30 p.m., more than 17 hours after the morning head count, investigators found two pairs of jail-issued sandals and a paper bag containing more rope the trio presumably left on the roof before making their way to freedom.
The trio cut through at least four layers of metal, including steel and rebar, made their way through unsecured plumbing tunnels, and emerged onto the roof, where they used a makeshift rope of knotted bed sheets and cloth to rappel to freedom.
Nayeri was charged in the 2012 torture and kidnapping of a wealthy marijuana dispensary owner and his housemate's girlfriend. Nayeri and several accomplices allegedly dragged the man into the desert, burned him with a blowtorch, doused him with bleach and severed his penis, authorities have said.
The man's attackers believed he was hiding up to $1 million in cash and hoped the torture would persuade him to surrender the money. The man was left to die in the desert but was rescued after the woman with whom he was kidnapped ran nearly a mile to get help.
Tieu was awaiting a retrial in connection with a 2011 gang slaying, prosecutors said.
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The three were also formally charged with escape Monday, prosecutors said.
Merrick Bobb, who once oversaw reforms of the Los Angeles County jail system, said it seemed unlikely that the men obtained the materials they needed to stage the escape on their own, and he expressed surprise that what was tantamount to a weeks-long construction project went undetected.
"These aren't tools that can be made out of dental floss," Bobb said. "Such cutting creates a lot of noise, and it would have to be covered up."
Officials said they have not found any evidence that jail personnel played a role in the escape and no jail employee has been suspended as part of the investigation into the breakout.
Built in 1968, the Santa Ana jail facility has seen only six escapes, including the most recent one. Hallock had previously said that only three escapes had occurred at the facility since its construction, but acknowledged Tuesday that three additional escapes had occurred in the early 1980s.
Times staff writers Veronica Rocha, Christopher Goffard and Anh Do contributed to this report
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