Fight over hostage's fate broke up California jail fugitives

SANTA ANA, Calif. (AP) - Three inmates who pulled off an intricate escape from a California jail stuck together and eluded authorities for nearly a week until their alliance unraveled over a dispute about whether to kill a cab driver they had taken hostage, authorities said.

Six days after their breakout - and 400 miles to the north - fugitives Hossein Nayeri and Bac Duong came to blows in a San Jose motel room because Nayeri wanted to kill the man and bury his body and Duong did not, authorities said Monday.

Duong prevailed and the next day took the hostage to Orange County, where he turned himself in.

The cab driver, who suffered minor injuries, immediately went to authorities. Nayeri and fugitive Jonathan Tieu, 20, were arrested Saturday in San Francisco after an alert citizen spotted their stolen van near a Whole Foods Market parking lot.

The trio's rapid undoing after days on the lam was a dramatic end to an escape plan that authorities believe was first hatched six months earlier by Nayeri, who is awaiting trial on charges of torture and kidnapping. Authorities say he cut off the penis of a man he believed had buried a large cache of money in the desert.

Duong was booked into the Orange County Central Men's Jail in December on a charge of attempted murder. He provided an outside contact who smuggled a knife into the jail while helping execute the escape plan, authorities said.

Tieu, who was awaiting trial on a gang-related murder charge, also joined the scheme, authorities said.

"This took a while," Orange County Sheriff Sandra Hutchens said. "To defeat these security systems, to defeat these metal grates, to defeat these 1-inch bars, it took some time."

Once out, the three were picked up by the accomplice that Duong had enlisted and driven to safety.

That night, Duong kidnapped the taxi driver at gunpoint and stole the van the following day in Los Angeles, authorities said. The fugitives and the cab driver spent three nights at a motel in Southern California before they headed north to the San Francisco Bay Area in the taxi and van.

They stayed for two nights in a San Jose motel where Nayeri and Duong fought over the fate of the cab driver, Sheriff's Capt. Jeff Hallock said.

When Nayeri and Tieu left the motel the next day to get the van's windows tinted, Duong drove back to Southern California with the cab driver and surrendered Friday at an auto repair shop in Orange County just miles from the jail. He told authorities his fellow fugitives had been in San Jose and confirmed they were still using the white van.

Authorities said Loc Ba Nguyen, the outside accomplice who knew Duong, has been charged with felony counts of possession of a weapon in a place of custody, carrying or sending a useful aid to escape from a jail or prison, and aiding escape, with a criminal enhancement for being in possession of a dangerous or deadly weapon.

He will be arraigned later this month and has not entered a plea. He is free on $300,000 bail. A judge agreed Tuesday to delay Nayeri's trial after his attorney said publicity surrounding the escape would make it hard to find an unbiased jury.

In their detailed account of the escape, authorities said the trio waited until after a 5 a.m. head count on Jan. 22 then slipped through a hole they had sawed in a metal grate that led to a plumbing tunnel. They then crawled through piping inside the jail walls to reach the roof, pushed aside barbed wire and rappelled down four stories using a rope made of sheets.

By 5:15 a.m., authorities said, they were outside and picked up by Nguyen. They bounced from one home to another that day in three Orange County cities.

At 9:30 p.m. - as guards realized they were missing - the trio took a cab to a Target in suburban Los Angeles. They shopped for unknown items then kidnapped the taxi driver, authorities said.

The next day, Duong stole the van during a test drive and the three got haircuts to disguise themselves before checking into a motel in Rosemead with the hostage.

Hutchens, the sheriff, has said Nayeri was likely the mastermind of the escape, in part because of his military experience.

He joined the Marines in 1998 out of high school and was court martialed in 2001 for bad conduct after deserting and spending 47 days in the brig, Marines spokeswoman Yvonne Carlock said.

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Associated Press Writer Julie Watson in San Diego contributed to this report.