Issue link: https://www.epageflip.net/i/634245
ByGillianFlaccus and Amy Taxin TheAssociatedPress SANTAANA Oneofthreevi- olent fugitives who escaped from an Orange County jail surrendered to police Fri- day by contacting a woman he knew at an auto electric repair shop just a few miles away, authorities and wit- nesses said. Bac Duong, 43, was taken into custody in Santa Ana, where the trio made their brazen escape on Jan. 22 from the maximum secu- rity facility, Orange County Sheriff Sandra Hutchens said. The other two jail fu- gitives remained at large. Lee Tran, whose family owns Auto Electric Rebuild- ers, said Duong came to the shop looking for Tran's sis- ter, Theresa, and told her that he wanted to surren- der. "He was scared for his life, pretty much," Tran said. "That's why he asked one of our people to turn him in." Tran said his sister called 911 and Duong stayed out- side, smoked a cigarette and waited for police. "She was crying her head off," said Trach Tran, her father, who was also there. "Everybody was scared." Tran said his sister's boyfriend knows Duong and federal authorities had come by to speak with her earlier this week because she might have visited Du- ong in jail. Shortly after the late- morning arrest, a team of well-armed officers in pro- tective vests swarmed the business. Hutchens declined to provide any further details at a hastily called news con- ference that lasted less than three minutes. She said au- thorities were still search- ing for a white van they be- lieve Duong had stolen last week. Authorities previously said the fugitives were likely still together and might be living out of the van. Search warrants were executed late Thursday at a warehouse and a private residence in Westminster. Two people were detained and later released. The investigation was focused on a Vietnamese gang, but Lt. Jeff Hallock, a sheriff's spokesman, de- clined to elaborate. Author- ities have made at least 10 arrests involving warrants and probation violations during the investigation and search. Duong, 20-year-old Jon- athan Tieu and 37-year-old Hossein Nayeri had all been awaiting trial for separate violent crimes at the Cen- tral Men's Jail in Santa Ana. They were held in a dormi- tory with about 65 other men in the jail about 30 miles southeast of Los An- geles. 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 four- story jail building. They pushed aside barbed wire and rappelled down using a rope made of bed linen. It took jail staff 16 hours to realize the three men were missing. On Thursday, author- ities arrested a woman who taught English inside the jail. Nooshafarin Rav- aghi, 44, gave Nayeri a pa- per copy of a Google Earth map that showed an aerial view of the entire jail com- pound, Hallock said. She was booked on suspi- cion of being an accessory to a felony and was being held pending a court ap- pearance set for Monday. It wasn't clear if she had a lawyer. Ravaghi and Nayeri also exchanged "personal and close" handwritten letters, but Hallock could not say if the two were romantically involved. "It wasn't the relation- ship that you would expect between a teacher and an inmate in a custody set- ting," he said. It wasn't clear why Nayeri was allowed to take Ravaghi's class because he spoke fluent English. Ravaghi, who was born, like Nayeri, in Iran, was working as a part-time Eng- lish instructor a local com- munity college district and had taken a sheriff's class on jail rules and how to avoid manipulation by in- mates, officials said. It was the first escape in nearly three decades from the California facility built in 1968 that holds 900 men. Tieu is charged with mur- der and attempted murder in a 2011 gang shooting. Nayeri had been held with- out bond since September 2014 on charges of kidnap- ping, torture, aggravated mayhem and burglary. Duong, a native of Viet- nam, has been held since last month on charges of attempted murder and as- sault with a deadly weapon. PRISON BREAK Au th or it ie s: 1 o f 3 Ora ng e Co un ty f ug it iv es a rr es te d KCBS-TV This frame from a video shows Bac Duong, one of three inmates who escaped from the Orange County jail, being returned to the Santa Ana jail a er he turned himself on Friday. By Jonathan J. Cooper The Associated Press SACRAMENTO All single- person bathrooms in Cali- fornia would become gen- der-neutral under legisla- tion proposed in the state Legislature. Assemblyman Phil Ting, a San Francisco Democrat, says his bill would make bathroom access more con- venient and fair for every- one. "What we really want to do is have bathrooms be what they're supposed to be about, which is con- venience, but also have them be about fairness and safety," Ting said Friday. AB1732 would help trans- gender people, parents with children of different gen- ders, and adults caring for aging parents without put- ting much of a burden on businesses, Ting said. The bill would not affect rest- rooms that have multiple stalls. Ting acknowledged that his bill would prevent busi- nesses with single-person restrooms from maintain- ing separate — cleaner — spaces for women to avoid the messier habits of men. "Like many women, I don't like using restroom that other men use either," Ting said. "I would hope that we can all evolve, and adapt and be better com- munity residents and be cleaner in the restroom." Kris Hayashi of the Transgender Law Center praised the bill in a state- ment. "This law will make life easier for everyone and re- duce the harassment regu- larly experienced by trans- gender people and others who don't match people's stereotypes of what it looks like to be a man or a woman," Hayashi said. Tom Scott, California di- rector of the National Fed- eration of Independent Business, said the prolif- eration of new legislative mandates makes it harder for businesses to succeed and distracts the Legisla- ture from more important issues. "This piling-on effect is not making California's business climate any bet- ter," Scott said. Similar bills were intro- duced last year in Vermont and New York, but neither has advanced beyond a committee. Ting's office says the cit- ies of Oakland, Denver, Bos- ton and Philadelphia have adopted similar rules. In California, advocacy groups proposed a ballot measure that sought to re- quire transgender people to use the public restrooms that correspond with their biological sex. The groups said last month that they failed to collect enough sig- natures to place the ques- tion on the California bal- lot. Robert Thomasson of the advocacy group Save- California.com, which op- poses the bill by Ting, said it's unnecessary and offen- sive. "It's not just about quote- unquote fairness, it's about pushing different values, different ideals in the faces of people," Thomasson said. "So that necessarily causes conflict." GENDER-NEUTRAL Bill in California Legislature would open single-stall restrooms to anyone SATURDAY, JANUARY 30, 2016 REDBLUFFDAILYNEWS.COM |NEWS | 5 A