Prisoner Escapes

An 18-year-old woman prisoner escaped from the Las Colinas Jail in Santee over the weekend, authorities said Sunday. Mary Gail Joubert, also known as Mary Gail Stevens, was being held at the jail on several theft-related charges, authorities said. She was discovered missing at 5:40 a.m. Sunday when jailers made a count of inmates, according to a spokesman for the sheriff's department. Authorities provided no information on how the prisoner escaped.

In Peter Weir's "The Way Back," which opened late last month for a brief Oscar-qualifying run and releases again on Jan. 21, a group of prisoners escapes a Stalin-era Siberian gulag by walking all the way to India. The film is structured very much as an ensemble, with equal moments given to Ed Harris, Saoirse Ronan, Colin Farrell and others, but it is British-born actor Jim Sturgess, portraying a Polish prisoner named Janusz, who is in many ways the audience's point of entry. The story not only opens with him, but also his character's desire to return to his wife is the emotional fulcrum on which the action moves.

Eighty years ago, federal officials told the District of Columbia to build its new prison 20 miles outside the capital, in the rolling hills near Lorton, Va. Today that prison is an unwanted neighbor in the suburbs that have grown up around it. The overcrowded and antiquated complex is a source of anxiety to residents of the area. District officials say their efforts to ease problems at the Lorton corrections complex have been blocked at every turn, and there's little they can do. "We've lost control," said Charlie Peelie, one of the guards charged with keeping order among the 8,600 inmates at Lorton.

In a daring escape, 16 prisoners, five of them awaiting execution, apparently crawled through a window of an Iraqi jail before fanning out in different directions, police and local officials said Thursday. The escape in the northern town of Tikrit, which raised concerns about corruption within security forces, resulted in a curfew in the birthplace of the late dictator Saddam Hussein, as authorities hunted for the men. At least two of the fugitives were later captured, one at a checkpoint in Tikrit and another elsewhere in Salahuddin province, outside Samarra, the provincial capital, police said.

Convicted Air Force deserter James Douglas Pou was locked up in a Navy brig here Thursday, facing new charges after his escape this month from a March Air Force Base jail. Chief Petty Officer Martin Wicklund, Navy spokesman in San Diego, said Pou, 33, surrendered at the Miramar Naval Air Station brig at 1:20 a.m. He was driven to the Navy jail by his civilian defense attorney, Paul Nestor of Orange County.

A burglary suspect who ran off while still handcuffed as officers were taking him into the Los Angeles Police Department's West Valley station for booking was recaptured about three hours later in the neighborhood, according to authorities. The name of the suspect--described only as a 29-year-old man--was not available, LAPD spokesman Don Cox said. The man took off running about 4 p.m. as the officers got him out of the patrol car and were leading him into the station at 19020 Vanowen St.

One of four Western tourists abducted by Kashmir separatist guerrillas Tuesday escaped from his captors. Police said the American tourist slipped away late Saturday. The American, identified as John Childs, was seized Tuesday along with another American and two Britons by militants of Al-Faran, a little-known group fighting for Kashmir's independence from India. Childs' escape followed the abduction of a fifth Western tourist, Dirik Hasert, a German.

Eleven illegal Chinese immigrants seized on fishing boats this week escaped Wednesday night when the government bus transporting them to Kern County stopped for gas in Fresno. According to the U.S. Border Patrol, the Chinese nationals forced open a door in the rear of the bus. By Thursday night 10 of the 11 immigrants had been rounded up by Border Patrol officers and Fresno police and sheriff's deputies. They were among the 300 Chinese taken off fishing boats near Santa Cruz on Wednesday.

A convicted burglar who escaped in January from a county jail in Castaic was recaptured Sunday when an off-duty Los Angeles County sheriff's deputy recognized him on an East Los Angeles street. Lorenzo Lorta, 37, of Bell Gardens was arrested without incident about 2 p.m. after the alert deputy recognized him and trailed him to Olympic Boulevard and Indiana Street, Deputy George Ducoulombier said.

Security forces in France and the Netherlands helped foil a series of jailbreaks planned by Libya and the outlawed Irish Republican Army last summer to free terrorists in Britain, the Sunday Times of London reported. The newspaper, citing security sources, said Libya, at meetings in Paris and Amsterdam, had offered financing if the IRA organized the operation.

Police said they had foiled an Italian drug trafficker's plan to break out of jail in the Canary Islands using a 4-yard-long zeppelin to bring him night-vision goggles and climbing equipment. The prisoner, identified as Giulio B., 52, was awaiting trial after being caught piloting a seaplane loaded with 440 pounds of cocaine. Police said they had arrested three people outside the jail who were preparing the escape and had intercepted a package sent from Italy containing supplies.

A former Iraqi Cabinet minister on Monday defended his escape from a Baghdad prison and said he planned to return to his home in the U.S. Ayham Sameraei, a former electricity minister with U.S. and Iraqi citizenship, was serving time for corruption when he escaped in December. The charges concerned an estimated $2 billion in missing funds for contracts to rebuild Iraq's electrical infrastructure. Sameraei said he fled because he feared being killed or kidnapped.

Investigators are looking into the possibility that Yemeni intelligence officers helped 23 Al Qaeda prisoners escape from an underground prison beneath a heavily guarded security headquarters, officials said. The prisoners escaped Friday, apparently by digging a tunnel that emerged at a mosque, the officials said. Interpol said Sunday that Jamal Badawi, who was sentenced to death for plotting and helping carry out the 2000 bombing of the U.S. destroyer Cole, was among the fugitives.

The Monterey County Sheriff's Department will form a new panel to investigate escapes from the County Jail. The plan for an internal escape-review board comes less than two weeks after Carlos Flores, a 23-year-old robbery suspect, walked out of the jail after impersonating another inmate who was set to be released.

Three inmates escaped from a county jail in Castaic on Tuesday while working in a laundry, authorities said. The men, ages 18 to 25, were not believed to be armed. A head count about 7 p.m. determined that the three were missing from Pitchess Detention Center, about 40 miles north of Los Angeles, said Sheriff's Deputy Mike Lorenzi. The men had convictions for burglary and possession of controlled substances, Lorenzi said.

Eighty-four prisoners escaped from a maximum-security prison in northeastern Brazil through a 50-yard tunnel they dug to the jungle outside, police said. Only three of them were quickly recaptured. The inmates burrowed under two buildings that housed inmates and beyond a prison wall topped with watchtowers.

A Vallejo man charged with receiving stolen property and carrying a loaded weapon was the only one of six inmates still at large after a recent jailbreak in Solano County. Police were still seeking Wesley A. Johnson, 43, who was in the jail at Fairfield awaiting trial on weapons charges at the time of the escape. Five other men who fled the jail Sunday night were back in custody--but one of them said he would do it again.

A 39-year-old Pacoima burglar who had just heard a jury find him guilty of a third-strike offense punched a bailiff in the face and tried to escape from the courthouse Tuesday. The bailiff and three Los Angeles Police Department officers who happened to be on hand helped subdue Steve Silvas before he could get away. "Everybody was shocked and startled," said Alisanne Scolnick, the deputy district attorney handling the case. "I've seen defendants stand up in court--but never attempt to escape."

Forty-eight prisoners escaped from an Indonesian prison while guards were engrossed in Brazil's game against Belgium at the World Cup. Police in the city of Pekanbaru on Sumatra island said the inmates fled shortly before the end of the first half of Monday's game, which Brazil won, 2-0, on second-half goals. Police said 15 of the escaped convicts were caught. Compiled by Fernando Dominguez