SANTA ANA, Calif. — A manhunt spanning Southern California was underway Sunday for three inmates described as "very dangerous" who escaped from a maximum-security jail in Orange County, using tools to cut through steel bars and then rappelling from the jail's roof with makeshift ropes made of linens.
The escape of Hossein Nayeri, 37, Jonathan Tieu, 20, and Bac Duong, 43, from the Orange County Central Men's Jail here was discovered at an 8 p.m. head count Friday, authorities said. The men had last been accounted for at 5 a.m., and could have disappeared at any time in between, although the officials with the Orange County Sheriff's Department said they believed a "disturbance" at the prison just before the head count was probably part of the escape plan.
Tieu has been charged with murder and attempted murder. His case is believed to be gang-related, and he had been held since 2013 on $1 million bond.
Nayeri is charged with kidnapping and torture in connection with the abduction of a marijuana dispensary owner in 2012. He is accused of being one of four men who took the dispensary owner to a spot where they believed he had hidden money, and cut off his penis, authorities said. Nayeri then fled to his native Iran, before being recaptured in the Czech Republic and extradited to the United States. He had been held without bond since 2014.
Duong is charged with attempted murder and had been held without bond since December.
Sheriff Sandra Hutchens, the county's top law enforcement official, issued a stern warning to the public Sunday: "Presume that they are armed, and do not approach them."
Officials said people previously involved in their cases — like victims and investigators — had been informed of their escape.
"Based on the charges that they're being held on, I think each of the three should be viewed as very dangerous," said Lt. Jeff Hallock of the Sheriff's Department.
In the neighborhoods around the jail, residents heard helicopters overhead Friday and Saturday nights, and dogs had been searching the area. For some, the prospect that suspects in killings and kidnapping were on the loose was terrifying.
"I'm really scared right now," said Grace Pae, 38. "I probably won't walk the dogs by myself when it's darker."
Others, however, felt sure that the escapees were far away by now.
"Those guys are long gone," said Kelly Thomas, 55. "They're not anywhere up here."
The three men were housed in a large, dormitory-style cell, which can hold more than 60 inmates.
"It seems that the inmates cut through half-inch steel bars to facilitate their escape," Hallock said. He added that evidence suggested they had also "cut their way through the plumbing tunnels and ultimately gained access to an unsecured area of the roof."
From the roof, the officials said, the men pushed the razor wire aside and used the rope to reach the ground.
Hutchens said it was not yet clear whether the men had help. But she called the escape a "very sophisticated operation, where they were allowed to go through some security access points, and had some tools that allowed them to do that."
"Where they got those tools and how that occurred, we are still looking into that," she added.
No sightings were reported, the sheriff said.
The Sheriff's Department released a series of photographs Sunday that seemed to depict how the inmates had made their way from the cellblock to the roof. One showed a large hole in a steel screen behind two beds in the dormitory. Another showed some tightly wound makeshift rope, which the escapees used to climb down from the roof.
At first glance, the escape bears a resemblance to the high-profile escape last year by a pair of convicted murderers from a state prison in upstate New York. In that case, the inmates had help from at least one prison employee, who smuggled in the tools they used to get through walls and pipes, and promised to pick them up on the outside. But the employee did not show up once the escape took place, and the two men ended up on the run for nearly three weeks, before one was killed and the other recaptured.
Hutchens said the central jail is an older facility, where the inmates are moved around more than in jails where services can be brought to them. That movement makes the prisoners more difficult to track.
"People in jail have a lot of time to sit around and think of ways to defeat our systems," Hutchens said, adding that the authorities "can't leave them locked down 24 hours a day."
In addition to the Sheriff's Department, the FBI and the U.S. Marshals Service were assisting with the manhunt, which spanned multiple counties Sunday. The authorities said there was no indication that the suspects had left the country.
A reward of up to $50,000 was offered for information leading to their recapture.