Police arrested one of three violent fugitive inmates after he told a woman in the same city where the jailbreak occurred a week ago that he wanted to surrender, authorities said. The other two men remained at large.
Bac Duong, 43, was taken into custody yesterday in Santa Ana, where the trio made their brazen escape on Jan 22 from the maximum security facility, Orange County Sheriff Sandra Hutchens said.
Lee Tran, an owner of Auto Electric Rebuilders, said Duong came into the shop looking for Tran's sister, Theresa, and told her that he wanted to turn himself in.
Tran says his sister called police and Duong went outside to smoke a cigarette and wait for police to arrive.
He says his sister's boyfriend knows Duong and that marshals had come by to speak with her earlier this week because she might have visited Duong in jail.
Shortly after the late-morning arrest, a team of well-armed officers in protective vests swarmed the business.
Hutchens declined to provide any further details at a hastily called news conference that lasted less than three minutes.
"We just got this information and as you can imagine we are pretty busy working this," she said, adding that authorities were still searching for a white van they believe Duong had stolen last week.
Authorities previously said the fugitives were likely still together and might be living out of the van.
Duong, 20-year-old Jonathan Tieu and 37-year-old Hossein Nayeri had all been awaiting trial for separate violent crimes. They were held in a dormitory with about 65 other men in the jail about 30 miles (48.28 kilometres) southeast of Los Angeles.
The men escaped in the early morning hours after cutting a hole in a metal grate then crawling through plumbing tunnels and onto the roof of a five-story jail building.
They pushed aside barbed wire and rappelled down using a rope made of bed sheets.
It took jail staff 16 hours to realise the three men were missing.
