The Slatest

California Inmates Escape Maximum Security Jail Using Bedsheets

Inmates Jonathan Tieu, Hossein Nayeri, and Bac Duong in a photo released by the Orange County Sheriff’s Department.

Orange County Sheriff’s Department/Handout/Reuters 

Three men accused of serious violent crimes escaped from an Orange County, California, jail on Friday by cutting through steel and metal and rappelling from a four-story roof by using a rope made in part from bedsheets, authorities say. From the L.A. Times:

Jonathan Tieu, 20, Bac Duong, 43, and Hossein Nayeri, 37, were discovered missing about 9 p.m. Friday when Orange County sheriff’s jail personnel conducting a nightly head count came up three short. A search of the facility turned up a makeshift rope made from bedsheets and spare cloth, a rectangular hole cut in a steel screen behind some beds and a misplaced coil of razor wire on the roof.

The three men may have escaped from the facility in the city of Santa Ana as early as Friday morning after a 5 a.m. headcount. Duong is charged with attempted murder, Tieu is charged with murder, and Nayeri is charged with kidnapping and torture in relation to a case in which the owner of a marijuana dispensary had his penis cut off. 

“It seems that the inmates cut through half-inch steel bars to facilitate their escape,” a sheriff’s department spokesman quoted by the New York Times said. The inmates apparently then accessed the jail’s roof via “plumbing tunnels.” There have been no reported sightings of the escapees.