11 Still At Large After Chula Vista Jailbreak : Escape: Overcrowding, outmoded security system cited as key reasons for the escape.

Thirteen inmates, two of whom are accused of murder, escaped from a San Diego County jail here Wednesday night by sawing through steel bars with hacksaws smuggled in through an open window, authorities said. Eleven of the men remained at large late Thursday.

The jailbreak was the biggest in county history and jail officials Thursday blamed overcrowded conditions and the failure of the county government to respond to requests for improvements in the security system.

The men escaped about 8:45 p.m. Wednesday by sawing through two bars, each about 5 inches deep and 1 1/2 inches thick, and then using the bars to smash through a plate-glass window. Sheriff’s Capt. Chuck Wood said a motion sensor system on the windows, installed when the jail was built in 1982, no longer works.

Wood said he was “mad as hell” about the escape and called it the most embarrassing moment in his law-enforcement career.

Sheriff’s Department officials said that Christopher Bell, 21, is considered the most dangerous of the 11 men still at large. Bell is charged with robbery and assault and is considered the key suspect in the October slaying of a La Mesa man who was kidnaped at a bank automatic teller machine and slain execution-style. Bell was being held without bail.

Jail officials were not aware an escape had occurred until a passer-by called 911 after seeing inmates getting in a car outside the jail. Two of the inmates involved in the breakout were quickly recaptured after the passer-by notified the Chula Vista Police Department.

Wood said the escape was successful despite perimeter guards and remote security cameras. He said the jail’s overall security system is ineffective.

“I’ve begged the county to get (the windows) fixed, and they just haven’t,” he said. “I don’t think we have a bad facility here, but I do think it’ll take about $100,000 to fix it up, primarily by installing sensors on the windows and outside as well.”

After breaking out, the men lowered themselves 40 feet to the ground by using bed sheets, Wood said. He said an investigation has determined that somebody lowered the hacksaws by rope to the inmates from a public walkway 15 feet above one of the jail’s unattended windows. The jail is built below ground and the public entry is at ground level, above the cellblocks. Wood said the delivery of the hacksaws took place without being detected by the guard on duty in Module 4B when the breakout occurred.

Wood would not blame any of the 12 guards who worked in the building Wednesday night. He complained Thursday of massive overcrowding, which Sheriff John Duffy, who runs the county’s jails, has cited numerous times in response to a spate of escapes and riots at both the Chula Vista facility and the one in El Cajon.

The South Bay jail is seven miles from the Mexican border and houses, in the words of Wood, “some of the toughest inmates in the county. On Jan. 3, we had 105 (suspected) murderers in here.”

Wood said the most serious offenders in San Diego County are kept at the County Jail downtown, but all of those who escaped Wednesday were felony suspects. Wood said he didn’t believe the inmates were a danger to the neighborhood because he expected they were headed out of the area.

Wood said the breakout was the second since he came to Chula Vista a year ago. The first occurred in December, when seven escapes smashed through a window in Module 3A and lowered themselves to the ground in a similar fashion. Two of those prisoners are still at large, Wood said. He said that only one other escape occurred between the opening of the jail in 1982 and last year.

Wood said the Chula Vista jail is built to house 192 inmates but currently contains more than 750. The men sleep three to a bunk in 8-by-11-foot cells scrawled with primitive graffiti. Wood said he has a staff of 53 deputies but no more than a dozen are on duty at night.

Wood said he blamed overcrowding and a lack of funding by the county’s General Services Administration for not coming up with the money to make the jail more secure.

“There is no one individual to blame for this,” he said. “The building’s construction was aesthetically pleasing, when, in fact, it should have been utilitarian. There are some holes that need to be filled, but this building is nothing like El Cajon’s. That’s a cracker box. Ours is a fairly secure facility. But we have an obvious problem when somebody can drop two hacksaws over a public walkway and into an open window and coordinate a fairly well-planned escape.”

Sheriff’s Capt. Ben McLaughlin, who runs the El Cajon jail, calls that facility one of the worst in the country and maybe the most poorly constructed. Ten inmates have escaped from El Cajon since the jail began housing them in 1983. The most recent problem at the El Cajon facility was a racial brawl that left 12 inmates injured, three with serious stab wounds.

Wood said he had asked not only for a system designed to detect escapes from the Chula Vista facility but also grating on the window through which the hacksaws were passed. He said he took $5,000 out of his own budget Thursday morning and installed vertical bars, which were welded over the window in each cell.

In regard to Wood’s complaints, Bob Lerner, public affairs manager for the county, said Thursday that the unattended window, through which the hacksaws were exchanged, “has never been identified by anybody as a security problem. That window was identified as a health hazard and General Services did have it on its list to put a grate on the window to restrict the pigeon droppings, which are quite extensive.”

Lerner said General Services was considering the request about upgraded security at the jail but did not have a timetable as to when it might happen.

Wood was supported at Thursday’s press conference by County Supervisor Brian Bilbray, whose district includes Chula Vista. Bilbray said General Services had been “dragging its feet” on needed improvements.

“What happened last night was just the symptom of a problem,” Bilbray said. “Proposition A has been held up by a judge, who says it’s inappropriate. And it’s OK to send a half-cent sales tax to San Francisco just because they had an earthquake. We’re much shorter in our funding than San Francisco, and we need the money bad. We need it for jails.”

(Proposition A, which voters approved in 1988, called for a half-cent increase in the county sales tax to finance the construction of new courts and jails. A Superior Court judge in Riverside County ruled that the proposition, which was approved by a simple majority, violated Proposition 13’s mandate for a two-thirds approval of new taxes. His ruling is being appealed.)

In addition to Christopher Bell, Wood identified the inmates who remained at large as follows:

Sergio Martinez, 22, and Audias Gomez, 36, who face murder charges; Larry Dominguez, 18, who faces attempted murder charges; Charles Neuman, 28, an alleged thief; Jesus Lopez, 21, who is accused of assault; Lance Williams, 25, who faces assault charges; Benjamin Tapia, 21, an accused burglar; Michael Walker, 29, accused of possessing stolen property; Carlos Renteria, 27, jailed for investigation of burglary; and Francisco Yacumba, 19, who faces a drug allegation.