4 More Teen-Agers Escape From County Juvenile Hall

Four teen-age crime suspects remained at large after prying off a screen and fleeing from the county Juvenile Hall in the third successful escape attempt from the Lincoln Heights facility in the last four months, officials said Friday.

One Juvenile Hall official indicated Friday that guards at the facility were to blame for the latest escape, but he declined to go into detail. “Apparently there was a problem with the human element (the correctional officers),” said Jerry Kaplan, an assistant superintendent. “It begins to look that way.”

Kaplan declined to comment further about responsibility for the Thursday night escape, saying only that the matter was “under investigation.”

After the mass escape of six violent-crime suspects from the hall on May 18, police criticized security at the facility as “unbelievable.” A few days later, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors asked for a study of the feasibility of housing violent youthful offenders in maximum-security facilities instead of Juvenile Hall.

Only one of the four youths who fled Thursday night--a 15-year-old being held on a robbery charge--was suspected of a violent crime. Another 15-year-old and a 16-year-old had been held on suspicion of driving a vehicle without the owner’s consent. A fourth suspect, Ramon Gonzales, 18, was being held on a drug count.

The names of the younger boys were withheld because of their ages.

Police said Thursday’s escape apparently occurred about 8:45 p.m. Kaplan said the four young inmates “pried open a screen--it was pretty heavy--and climbed over a wall.”

An employee at the facility reported seeing one of the young men--apparently the last to flee--jump from a van parked inside the facility to the fence, which he then scaled. The employee sounded the alarm, and within a few minutes, a head count showed that a total of four had escaped.

“All are local Los Angeles gang members,” said Sgt. Bob McCrary of the Los Angeles Police Department’s Hollenbeck Division. “But they are not considered dangerous.”

Officials said there was no evidence of outside help in Thursday’s escape.

In March, Barry Mortis, 17, who was being held on kidnaping and rape counts, and another youth, whose identity has not been released, escaped from the facility at 1605 Eastlake Ave.

Two months later, on May 18, six teen-agers accused variously of murder, kidnaping, rape and assault with a deadly weapon fled from the hall after someone on the outside used a stolen car to crash through a gate on the north side of the facility.

On May 20, Mortis was arrested on a fugitive warrant at a house near 61st Street and Vernon Avenue. The youth who escaped with him has not been arrested.

Police say Mortis had helped the six to escape on May 18. The six--18-year-olds Javier Camacho, Hugo Roman and Alvino Martinez, and 17-year-olds Joseph Van Matthews, Francisco Gallegos and Yobanbi Luna--were still at large on Friday.