Escapee Says He Fled Jail Because Deputy Beat Him

Tired, bruised and on the lam, 19-year-old Richard Herrera shook anxiously as he described how he escaped just a few days earlier from the Temple City Jail.

It happened Tuesday night. Herrera was handcuffed to a bench in the lockup, facing charges of grand theft auto. A sheriff’s deputy had beaten him badly, he said. Afraid he would be beaten again, he made a run for it, slipping out of the restraints and into the night.

“I was running from the station,” Herrera said. “Then I turned and looked back. I started crying because I thought, ‘If they catch me, they’re gonna shoot me,’ ”

Herrera granted The Times an interview Friday as he sat in an East Los Angeles attorney’s office. He said he was brutalized by a deputy who beat him with a flashlight and threatened him with a gun, charges that Los Angeles County sheriff’s officials denied.

“How would you feel if they put a gun to your head and they beat you up and then they told you they we’re going to do it again?” he said.

The Sheriff’s Department has issued media advisories detailing Herrera’s escape. There is a warrant out for his arrest on charges of escape, evading arrest and battery on a police officer, and the department’s fugitive unit is looking for him.

Herrera and sheriff’s officials disagree about the circumstances surrounding his arrest Tuesday afternoon in Rosemead and about how he sustained his injuries.

Capt. Robert Mirabella of the department’s Temple City station said a deputy on patrol stopped Herrera in a 1983 Camaro because the front license plate was missing.

Herrera said the car belonged to his mother, but Mirabella said Herrera was unable to produce a vehicle registration and was arrested on suspicion of auto theft.

As a deputy tried to question him, Mirabella said, Herrera jumped over a nearby fence into some bushes. He said the deputy caught up with Herrera and used force to restrain him, which caused some injuries.

Herrera said he was beaten for no apparent reason other than giving the deputy a dirty look. “I was cursing but I was saying, ‘Why are you hurting me?’ ” Herrera says the officer later told him: “I don’t like punk cholos.”

Once in the station, Herrera was asked by a sergeant how he got his bruises and was taken to a nearby hospital for treatment. Herrera was returned to the lockup, in an area of the jail still under construction. When an officer stepped out of the room briefly, Herrera escaped.

Herrera said he ran from the jail out of fear because the deputy involved in the case said he thought Herrera had “snitched” to the sergeant and threatened to beat him as he was transported to the County Jail.