Boys’ Daring Aided Juvenile Hall Escape

Two teen-age boys, one of them facing murder charges, managed to escape from Orange County Juvenile Hall’s maximum security section Friday night by breaking a safety window with a 25-pound weight from a weight-lifting set while a shocked staff member watched.

“It was a daring escape that only a 16- or 17-year-old boy would even try; maybe that’s part of being young, restless and fearless,” Don E. Hallstrom, Juvenile Hall superintendent, said Sunday.

John M. Richardson, 17, charged with participating with two others in a May 20 robbery at a check-cashing store in which the owner was fatally shot, was still at large Sunday night. Police believe that he may have headed to the San Francisco Bay area, where his guardian lives. Richardson, at the time of his arrest last month, was a runaway from a juvenile facility in Chino.

The other escapee was a 16-year-old held on charges of probation violation who turned himself in to police about six hours later. He was returned to Juvenile Hall and is in a different section under close security, Hallstrom said.

The boys ran 225 yards across an athletic field to a 14-foot-high fence that they scaled in seconds. Staff members who had been alerted to the escape ran to the field but couldn’t see the youths in the darkness until they scaled the fence.

“About all we can say is that everything happened so fast, we simply failed to stop them,” Hallstrom said.

Police were not notified until several minutes after the escape. Hallstrom said his office is investigating to determine what happened and whether the situation could have been handled better.

“I’m disappointed and concerned,” Hallstrom said. “We have very, very few problems at Juvenile Hall, even though we’re often over our 344 (resident) capacity. And it’s extremely rare to have a problem in (the maximum security) section.”

The 16-year-old was being interviewed over the weekend to help officials determine what happened. Here are the events of the escape, as related by Hallstrom:

Four of the 16 young men in the 16-bed maximum security section--which juvenile officials call their “adjustment unit”--were under supervision in the dayroom (a recreation room near their cells) shortly before 10 p.m. The four were lifting weights and watching television “in plain sight” of a deputy probation counselor.

One of the two escapees threw the weight through an elevated window. Hallstrom said the boys apparently climbed on top of furniture and scampered through the window before the staff member could respond.

“What we don’t know at this point is whether all four were in on it or just the two,” Hallstrom said.

Hallstrom said staff members would not have expected the boys to make it over the fence with a full escape alert already in effect. Also, the top of the fence has two different types of wire mesh to deter escapes.

“It’s the kind of stuff that’s almost impossible to get your fingers or your tennis shoes into to make an escape--unless you’re young and eager to take the risk and you know someone is close on your heels,” Hallstrom said.

Also, Hallstrom said, the escape was aided by the darkness, which made it difficult to spot the boys until they were already atop the fence.

Hallstrom declined to say whether any staff members had violated procedures.

“That’s one of the reasons we’re in here on a Sunday, to try to look at things like that,” he said. He did not rule out the possibility that some staff members were at fault.

The county probation office, which operates Juvenile Hall, did not consider the maximum security section a security risk because of the safety glass, which Hallstrom said is extremely difficult to break, and the close supervision.

After the escape, the broken window was boarded up and the weights were taken out of the dayroom. No extra staff was added, but Hallstrom said that “because of this incident, our staff has become more alert.”

“I think you could say our staff is more cautious now, that our security is more intense,” he said. “But we have more than 300 kids here who are not causing us a problem, and we’re trying to operate with regular visiting and business as usual.”

Richardson is described by police as 5 feet, 10 inches tall and 145 pounds. He was wearing a maroon T-shirt, jeans and sneakers when he escaped.

Prosecutors say Richardson and two others were involved in a shoot-out with Philip Brower, 64, of Corona del Mar, when Brower and his son were opening the Cash Unlimited store at 1509 N. Main St. in Santa Ana on May 2. Before Brower was killed, he fired back at his assailants, killing one of them, Gerrald K. Roberts, 20, of Costa Mesa. Roberts was identified as the shooter.

Richardson and Harley C. Curtis III, 20, of Irvine were apprehended a short time later. Prosecutors said both confessed their role in the robbery. Richardson was a runaway from the Boys Republic youth correctional facility in Chino.