Human Error Aided Jailbreak, Sheriff Says

Sheriff Sherman Block told the Board of Supervisors on Tuesday that human error contributed to the escape of 14 inmates from a maximum-security jail, and then he asked for money to beef up fences and add security alarms.

“Certainly there was some human failure and there were structural deficiencies,” said Block, who acknowledged that the escape early Sunday morning from the Peter J. Pitchess Honor Rancho--the largest jailbreak in county history--has been an embarrassment.

Block had been asked by the board to explain the breach in security as Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies and other law enforcement agencies continued the search for two inmates still at large, including one convicted killer. Sheriff’s deputies concentrated their search at housing tracts in the Santa Clarita Valley.

Block said the inmates were able to escape through a hole in a dormitory ceiling that had been covered by maintenance crews with an oversized piece of sheet metal. The prisoners were able to pry the metal loose, and widen the hole over several days without being detected.

“This was just human error and miscalculating,” Block said in an interview after the board meeting. “(The sheet of metal) was too large and it shouldn’t have been.”

The inmates had devised a series of hand signs to signal when the lone deputy assigned to guard the 96 inmates in the dorm was looking away, Block said. The deputy on guard the night of the jailbreak was completing paperwork as, one by one, the 14 inmates crept through the hole to an air duct, which led to the roof.

The inmates, using a piece of wood left behind by construction workers, had spent three days loosening steel bars guarding the air vent leading to the roof, Block said. Once outside, the inmates scaled a 16-foot razor-wire fence to escape.

Block also blamed overcrowding at the facility, which was built for 700 inmates, but currently houses 1,600. “The bunks are literally clear to the ceiling,” he said.

That enabled the inmates to move in and out of the hole without catching the attention of guards, Block said. The hole, which was located farthest away from the guard station in the dorm, has since been repaired.

Block also said some of the inmates had spent enough time at the jail--in some cases as much as two years--to figure out ways to escape. The inmates, Block said, “detected the slightest chink in our armor.”

To avoid a repeat of the jailbreak, Block requested $176,000 to add more razor-wire to the existing fence and roof, as well as an alarm system for the fence and video cameras. The Sheriff’s Department had asked the board for many of those items in past years but had been denied, he said.

The board agreed to spend $200,000 to pay for Block’s request.

“We need to work toward zero-tolerance as far as prison escapes are concerned,” Block said.

Sheriff’s deputies arrested 10 of the inmates Sunday within hours of their escape. Two more were arrested Monday, one within a mile of the jail and another at a hotel in Downtown Los Angeles.

The two men who remain at large both had been sentenced to state prison just days before the Sunday morning escape. Walter Ramos Padilla, 22, was sentenced Friday to seven years for a carjacking. Luis Armando Galdamez, 28, was sentenced Thursday to 11 years after pleading guilty to manslaughter.

Court-ordered probation reports obtained Tuesday show the two had previously been arrested for burglary and auto theft.

Galdamez, a father of two who used the nickname “Lizard,” shot and killed two teen-agers in separate incidents with a 9-millimeter Beretta semiautomatic pistol stolen from a Los Angeles police officer’s car Jan. 17, 1992.

Both shootings occurred near his home in the 200 block of South Lake Street, east of Downtown Los Angeles, and are believed to be drug-related. Galdamez was born in San Salvador, El Salvador, where his father still lives.

Galdamez’s first victim, 17-year-old William Valenzuela, was shot a dozen times Oct. 30, 1992, following a confrontation with Galdamez. The second, 16-year-old Jose Otis Benavides, exchanged gunfire with Galdamez, then ran after running out of bullets.

Witnesses told police that Benavides was lying wounded in the intersection of Crandall and Valley streets, when Galdamez walked up and shot him twice in the head.

“He is a coldblooded killer, with no regard for the personal and property rights of others, and will continue to shoot and kill if allowed to return to the street,” wrote deputy probation officer Alexander Peace in Galdamez’s probation report of May, 1994.

Court records show that Padilla served as the driver, with an armed co-defendant, in a carjacking Jan. 18 in the Wilshire area. According to his probation report, the victim was forced out of his Honda at gunpoint when he parked near his apartment shortly before 4 a.m. Padilla was driving when police pulled the Honda over about an hour later.

Padilla, a native of Colima, Mexico, first entered the United States illegally in 1987, and during the past four years his life has been a revolving door of arrests and deportations, records show.

He was first deported in December, 1992, after his release from state prison following a sentence for drug possession and burglary. He returned in March, 1993, and was deported again last December, following a second stint in state prison. He had returned for a third time just days prior to the carjacking.

“If deported, he states that he may come back into the United States. He has no real life in Mexico,” a probation officer wrote after interviewing Padilla in February.

Meanwhile, the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office filed charges Tuesday against three of the inmates who escaped over the weekend but were later caught. Michael J. Tirpac, 19; Jose Antonio Santa Maria, 28, and Zoe Lee Issac, 23, were charged with one count each of escape from jail with charges pending.

The three defendants, awaiting trial on murder charges, were caught by deputies while scaling a fence in their underwear. The men are scheduled to be arraigned Thursday in Whittier Municipal Court. If convicted, they each face a maximum three years in prison.

Charges are also expected to be filed later in the week against eight other inmates who tried to escape but were captured.