The two remaining fugitives from a California jailbreak last week are in custody, law enforcement officials said Saturday on Twitter.
Hossein Nayeri and Jonathan Tieu were captured Saturday morning after a woman in San Francisco alerted police officers that she had seen a stolen white van that the two men were using, Orange County Sheriff Sandra Hutchens told reporters.
San Francisco police said the woman told officers near the Park District Station that she had seen a man who looked like one of the suspects — Nayeri, as it turned out. Police officers soon saw the man, who sprinted away. He didn’t get far before he was caught.
The van was found nearby with Tieu hiding inside.
Hutchens told reporters there were .380-caliber rounds found in the van but neither fugitive had a weapon. She said her investigators from Southern California were in San Francisco to interview the escapees.
Detectives are trying to determine whether anyone helped the pair and another man in the eight days since they escaped.
The third escapee, Bac Tien Duong, 43, had been taken into custody in Santa Ana on Friday morning after he asked a worker at an auto parts store to call police.
The trio likely broke out of a maximum-security jail in Santa Ana after a 5 a.m. headcount January 22, but it wasn’t until more than 15 hours later that authorities discovered the sophisticated escape.
The inmates used tools to cut through security bars in a plumbing tunnel and into air vents. They also apparently used sheets braided into ropes to rappel down four to five stories — about 50 feet — from the roof of the jail.
It was the first time anyone had escaped from the jail since 1988.
Tieu, 20, was in jail awaiting trial on a murder charge and attempted murder in an allegedly gang-related attack. Authorities say he is a member of a Vietnamese gang.
Nayeri, 37, has been accused of kidnapping and attacking a man, pouring bleach on him, setting the victim on fire, severing his penis and leaving him to die in the desert, authorities have said. The man survived.
Duong was to be tried on an attempted murder charge.
Each has pleaded not guilty.
