LOS ANGELES—It was a daring and elaborate escape: cutting through metal, crawling through plumbing tunnels, climbing a roof, rappelling four stories to freedom using ropes made from bedsheets.
But this wasn’t a Hollywood movie; it was a real-life breakout that left authorities struggling to find three escapees—one an alleged killer—and put together the pieces of how they managed to thwart security at a Southern California maximum-security jail.
The priority was finding the men—whom are possibly armed and considered dangerous—but a probe also is underway to see whether the men had any help from inside or outside the Orange County Men’s Central Jail, authorities said Sunday.
Jonathan Tieu, 20; Bac Duong, 43, and Hossein Nayeri, 37, were all awaiting trial for violent crimes but their cases were unconnected. They vanished from a dormitory they shared with around 65 other men on Friday shortly after the 5 a.m. inmate head count, county sheriff’s officials said.
