66 Prisoners Escape From Ensenada Jail

Sixty-six prisoners crawled through a narrow drainage pipe to escape from the municipal jail here in a well-planned operation that apparently was accomplished in broad daylight without a single incidence of violence, Mexican authorities said Tuesday.

The escapees--some said to be suspected or convicted murderers, rapists and drug traffickers--represented more than a fifth of the jail’s 306 inmates, said Miroslava Cuellar, a spokeswoman for the mayor’s office. The jail is designed to hold 200 prisoners, she added.

“Some of these people are definitely very dangerous,” said Cuellar, who, like other authorities, was unable to provide an exact breakdown of the crimes attributed to the escapees.

By midday Tuesday, Cuellar said, state, federal and local police had recaptured 14 of the escapees at roadblocks. Most of the escapees apparently had secured rides out of the city.

Authorities are now investigating the circumstances surrounding the jailbreak, which is believed to be the largest ever in Baja California. Ensenada Mayor Ernesto Ruffo Appel said there is strong suspicion that the escapees had inside help. There were conflicting reports about the escape, and authorities declined to divulge many details.

As an indication that the Monday afternoon operation was well-planned, accomplices with vehicles were apparently waiting for at least some of the escapees outside the prison, police sources said.

Among those being held for questioning by Baja California State Judicial Police, authorities said, are jail warden Manuel Becerra Mejia, his deputy and the eight prison guards on duty at the time of the escape. Also to be questioned, the mayoral spokeswoman said, are two other prison guards who were off duty at the time of the escape.

The escapees included both convicted felons and others awaiting legal proceedings on a broad range of charges, authorities said. Convicted criminals are supposed to be housed in the state penitentiary in Tijuana, but severe overcrowding there has led authorities to place them in loosely guarded municipal jails throughout Baja California.

“The mayor has said that these (convicted) people should not be in our jail,” said Cuellar, referring to her boss, who last year was elected mayor of Ensenada, a fast-growing coastal municipality of 300,000 residents about 70 miles south of Tijuana.

In a press conference in Ensenada, Cuellar said, Ruffo acknowledged that the municipal jail needed additional guards, but he added that there is insufficient funding to increase staffing. Ruffo, a member of the opposition National Action Party, or PAN, has been involved in a bitter budget dispute with the Baja California state government, which is controlled by Mexico’s dominant Institutional Revolutionary Party. Ruffo has maintained that the state has provided his administration with insufficient resources to run the municipality.

“We’re doing all we can with the resources we got,” Ruffo said late Tuesday.

The jailbreak is likely to increase official criticism of the popular mayor, who is the first PAN representative to gain a mayoral seat in Baja California.

Officials provided the following account of the jailbreak:

Between 3:30 and 4 p.m. Monday, as a large group of inmates were playing baseball and soccer in the jail’s yard, other prisoners used a tool to cut through the metal bars that covered the entrance of a drainage pipe. The drainage pipe’s opening was near a guard tower that was unmanned because the two guards were absent. Three other towers were manned, but it was unclear whether any of them provided a clear view of the drainage pipe.

Inside the pipe, which has a diameter of about two feet, prisoners cut two other sets of metal bars designed to impede escape.

Once the bars were cut, prisoners began squirming through the pipe, which leads outside the jail’s grounds to a nearby arroyo. The distance from the jail to the outlet of the drainage pipe could not be determined.

The jailbreak was not discovered until a standard evening check of the prison population was taken about 7:30 p.m., Cuellar said.

The jail, about three miles east of downtown Ensenada, opened last year. Before this week, the mayoral spokeswoman said, there had been two other jailbreaks involving a total of three escapees, all of whom were captured.

The current warden, who has only been on the job about two weeks, was appointed to replace a predecessor who had been criticized for lapses in security, Cuellar said.

Miguel Cervantes contributed to this story from Ensenada.