Man pleads guilty to acting as getaway driver in 2016 Orange County jailbreak

A Costa Mesa man pleaded guilty Thursday to helping three men escape from an Orange County jail last year, an incident that sparked a weeklong manhunt that extended from Southern California to the Bay Area, prosecutors said.

Loc Ba Nguyen, 51, will serve one year in jail for his role in the January 2016 escape at the Central Men’s Jail in Santa Ana, according to a statement issued by the Orange County district attorney’s office.

Nguyen admitted to smuggling wire cutters, cellphones, a knife and other items into the jail — tools that proved essential in the escape carried out by Hossein Nayeri, Bac Duong and Jonathan Tieu, prosecutors said.

Prosecutors said Nguyen was given a shopping list of items necessary for the jailbreak plot when he visited Duong at the facility on Jan. 9, 2016. He also admitted to serving as the getaway driver after the trio broke out weeks later, early on the morning of Jan. 23, prosecutors said.

A spokeswoman for the district attorney’s office declined to say exactly what the wire cutters and knife were used for. Previously, authorities said Nayeri, Duong and Tieu used a “cutting tool” to saw through several layers of metal and rebar, giving them access to plumbing tunnels that led to the jail’s roof.

They rappelled down the side of the building, where Nguyen was waiting with a car.

Jail staff did not learn of the escape for nearly 15 hours, giving the trio a lengthy head start on their pursuers. Law enforcement officials have said Nayeri, Duong and Tieu took a cab driver hostage and drove to San Jose in the days after the escape.

Their plan fell apart when Duong and Nayeri became embroiled in an argument over whether to kill the hostage. Duong eventually drove back to Orange County, released the cab driver and surrendered. Nayeri and Tieu were arrested in San Francisco the next day.

Earlier this year, the Orange County grand jury released a scathing report blaming lax supervision within the Sheriff’s Department and improper inmate counting procedures as key factors that allowed the trio to escape and helped prolong their time on the run.

The Sheriff’s Department has yet to issue an after-action report on the incident, which would follow normal protocols for major events, because of the ongoing criminal case, according to Lt. Lane Lagaret, a department spokesman.

The “cutting tool” that the men used to escape was never recovered. Duong, Nayeri and Tieu were scheduled to appear in court for preliminary hearings this month, though it was not immediately clear whether those had taken place.

james.queally@latimes.com

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