Suspect in Attacks Vanishes From Sheriff’s Bus : Escape: The Garden Grove man accused of rape and kidnaping was last being boarded on the way to court but was missing when the vehicle arrived.

A prisoner, accused of attacking three women, mysteriously escaped from a Sheriff’s Department bus en route to court Friday, officials said.

Rafael Rosales Ceballos, 33, of Garden Grove was last seen Friday morning getting ready to board the bus at the County Jail, Lt. Richard J. Olson said.

“When the bus arrived at (Westminster Municipal) court, deputies reported him missing,” Olson said. “We’re investigating how he made his escape, but all indications show that he was seen loaded onto the bus.”

Ceballos had been scheduled to appear in court to face charges on 13 counts, including rape, robbery, assault with a deadly weapon and kidnaping. He is considered dangerous, Olson added.

Ceballos was arrested in Huntington Beach on Sept. 1 on suspicion of assaulting three women in three cities on that same day, Olson said. The women later identified him as their assailant, police said.

At about the same time that deputies discovered Ceballos missing Friday, police in Santa Ana received a report of a suspicious person is an orange jump suit covered with grease running in the area of Harbor Boulevard and Washington Avenue. Police scoured the area, and the Sheriff’s Department assigned a fugitive team to search for Ceballos, according to Olson.

In the first of the three assaults on Sept. 1, a 33-year-old Garden Grove woman was raped, cut with a knife and robbed by a man who demanded money from her in the parking lot of a shopping area at the southwest corner of Magnolia Street and Westminster Avenue in Westminster. Police said the woman suffered serious cuts on her hand and fingers that required 22 stitches.

The second attack occurred in Garden Grove outside a Target store at Brookhurst Street and Westminster Avenue. A 54-year-old woman was getting into her car when a man grabbed her and pulled her in the car. He began driving, but she managed to leap out as he fled in her car, police said.

Later, at another shopping center at Sher and Edinger avenues in Huntington Beach, a man tried to assault a woman who had entered her car, police said. Wielding a knife, the man tried to force the door but it was locked. The woman drove away and called police.

A Huntington Beach officer, recognizing the stolen car from a broadcast about the second attack in Garden Grove, stopped Ceballos about three-quarters of a mile away. The Garden Grove woman’s purse was found in the car, police said.