Gone Again : Escaped Orange County Prisoner Flees in Arizona

A man already wanted as an escaped Orange County Jail prisoner fled Thursday from Arizona authorities who had had him in custody for a week, unaware that he was a fugitive from California.

Michael Wayde Mohon had used an alias when arrested Jan. 24 in the Phoenix suburb of Mesa, and police there discovered Mohon’s true identity about the same time he and another prisoner were breaking out of a van taking them back to jail from court appearances Thursday, according to Cpl. Jay Ellison of the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Department.

But the identification came too late, and once out of the van, the pair fled in a pickup truck stolen from a nearby garage, Ellison said. They were still at large Thursday night.

Two weeks ago, using a gun planted by an accomplice, the 38-year-old Mohon escaped from an Orange County sheriff’s deputy as he was being taken to UCI Medical Center in Orange to undergo physical therapy for wounds he had suffered in a shoot-out with a Fountain Valley police officer in 1983.

Mohon’s wife, 36-year-old Sharon Rose Shaw, was arrested on suspicion of aiding the escape, but a widespread search in Southern California, including a predawn raid on the Cudahy house of some of Mohon’s friends, failed to uncover a trace of the fugitive.

But then last week Mohon was arrested as a suspect in the robbery and attempted kidnaping of a Mesa man after leading police on a 100-mile high-speed chase that finally ended when Mohon crashed into a roadblock set up by officers, according to Sgt. Randy Lewis.

However, Mohon identified himself to Mesa police as Claude Banks Tillman, a transient from Midland, Tex., so police were unaware that he was wanted in California, Lewis said.

And, according to Orange County sheriff’s spokesman Lt. Dick Olson, an Orange County Sheriff’s Department detective went to Phoenix last weekend on a tip that Mohon was in the area. Mohon was there in the Maricopa County Jail, but the alias prevented his detection, Olson said.

On Thursday, Mohon had appeared at a preliminary hearing in Mesa Justice Court on charges of armed robbery, attempted kidnaping, car theft and unlawful flight and was being taken back to the main jail in Phoenix about 2:30 p.m., according to Maricopa County sheriff’s spokesman Ellison.

While the deputy driving the van was inside a courthouse in Tempe picking up another prisoner, Ellison said, Mohon and 20-year-old Jeffrey William Leslie of Mesa, a fraud and theft suspect, escaped by kicking out a plexiglass partition that separates the inmates from the driver’s compartment. They were also able to remove their handcuffs, Ellison said.

Pickup Stolen

Barefoot and clad only in blue jail prisoner pants, Mohon and Leslie apparently made their way across the Arizona State University campus to a garage about a mile away, where they stole the truck, Ellison said.

At about the same time the two men were escaping, a Mesa police detective who had been in court with Mohon Thursday discovered a wanted poster on him issued by Orange County authorities. After first calling California to verify Mohon’s identity and fugitive status, the detective then called to alert the Maricopa Sheriff’s Department. But it was too late.

Mohon has long been classified as an escape risk by California authorities, who said he had fled from a California Youth Authority facility in 1964 and attempted to get out of Los Angeles County Jail in 1976 by beating a corrections officer with a broom.

When Mohon escaped from the UCI Medical Center two weeks ago, he was awaiting trial on charges that he tried to kill a Fountain Valley policeman following an alleged burglary in December, 1983. Mohon was chased down on foot and then assertedly attempted to get the officer’s gun. One of the shots fired during the struggle for the weapon wounded reserve officer Kevin Arnold, who then shot Mohon five times, authorities said.

Mohon was still undergoing treatment and therapy for those wounds when he escaped two weeks ago. Authorities said that Mohon and a sheriff’s deputy escorting him to the medical center from the jail in Santa Ana had just entered the therapy building when the prisoner produced a gun.

According to court documents filed in the case, Mohon told the deputy, “Don’t reach for your gun. That would be stupid.” After disarming the deputy and handcuffing him to a water pipe, Mohon got into a truck left for him in the parking lot and fled.