Police Search in Vain for Escaped Killer : Manhunt: False leads send police from Escondido to the border in a fruitless quest for a fleeing repeat offender, whose own mother calls him ‘an intimidating gorilla.’

Homicide investigators chased false leads as far south as the international border and as far north as Escondido on Tuesday in pursuit of a jail escapee who shot and killed a motorist late Monday in the Gaslamp Quarter.

San Diego police said 34-year-old Jonathon George is armed and “very dangerous” and that freeing himself from handcuffs and waist chains, then kicking open the door of a prisoners van, is typical of the violent man whose past offenses include several escapes.

George is “extremely violent” and “crazy . . . He’s very volatile,” U.S. Marshal John Clark said. “The guy just goes off like a volcano.”

Law enforcement agencies throughout San Diego County continued to search late Tuesday for the mustachioed George, who is 6 feet tall and 240 pounds and who authorities say “beat senseless” a female deputy and killed a 28-year-old man who refused to succumb to a carjacking.

The crime was the 160th carjacking in San Diego this year--hundreds more have occurred countywide in what is fast becoming a national epidemic, authorities said. The slaying of motorist Michael (Mick) Champion is the first fatality connected to such incidents locally.

Champion was slain one day before the U.S. House of Representatives passed legislation making armed carjacking a federal crime punishable by up to 15 years in prison--and life imprisonment if a death results.

Investigators say George kicked open the side door of a van taking him and another prisoner back to the federal Metropolitan Correctional Center, at F and Union streets, after a court appearance in El Cajon. The other prisoner remained in the van, still and silent, throughout the ordeal.

The incident began about 8:50 p.m. Monday near Market Street and 4th Avenue. After fleeing the van, George ran north on 5th Avenue, where police say he attempted to force three motorists out of their cars.

He dragged a woman out of her van. With George behind the wheel, she refused to give up her keys, police said, and managed to run away without being injured, leaving him unable to start the car.

Lydia Werner, the 58-year-old sheriff’s deputy who was driving the van from which George escaped, then re-entered the fray. Werner chased the suspect for two blocks before tackling him near 5th and Market.

George beat her senseless, police said, then seized her handgun. Werner, a 13-year veteran of the force, was cut on the head and was hospitalized briefly in UC San Diego Medical Center for a concussion. She was released early Tuesday.

George then assaulted a second motorist, a Radio Cab taxi driver, who also refused to turn over the wheel to the armed escapee.

During the struggle, George bit the cabdriver in the face, police said, but the man drove away before George could commandeer the taxi.

A dispatcher for Radio Cab said Tuesday that George shoved the gun into the face of driver Mark McGee and let go when McGee took off in the cab, swerving down the street. He said McGee saw Champion shot and chased George for several blocks but was “too upset” to continue the chase.

After attacking McGee, police said, George attempted a carjacking at 5th and G, where he confronted the driver of a 1989 maroon Honda Civic who was stopped at a red light. George ordered the 28-year-old Champion out of his car, police said.

Champion refused and George shot him once in the head, police said, leaving him bleeding on the pavement beside the car. A friend of Champion’s fled from the car unharmed.

Police say George was last seen driving the car north on 5th Avenue.

George tried late Monday to break into the home of a girlfriend in East San Diego, police said, but was unsuccessful. He allegedly fired shots into the home, where three small children live.

A store owner named Larry Davis told KNSD-TV on Tuesday of his concern that George will come after him. He said he turned George in after his most recent escape.

“As long as he doesn’t come my way, I’m not looking for him,” Davis said. “But if he comes in here, one of us has got to go.”

Authorities say George’s record includes arrests for robbery (1975); 10 other arrests, including auto theft from 1976 to 1977; battery of an officer (1977); rape (1977); escape (1977), and rape and battery (1980).

They said his trouble with the law dates to 1972, when he was 14. At 17, he was in County Jail for robbery and, while incarcerated, sodomized an inmate, authorities said. He was later sentenced to a mental hospital, from which he escaped.

In 1980, George was sentenced to 10 years but served only half the time. San Diego County Superior Court Judge David Gill warned prison officials that “there’s a legitimate need for society for protection from this man.” Gill asked for the maximum prison time.

George’s mother, who asked that her name not be used, called her son “an intimidating gorilla,” saying he had been in trouble with the law since age 12. She said she was amazed that sheriff’s deputies had only one officer escort him back to jail.

George’s mother and his father, Leonard George, said Tuesday that his desire to flee prosecution is so great, as are his guile and cunning, that in their opinion he would “not be taken alive.”

The elder George said his son is “very intelligent” and that he fixed a television set by himself when he was 10 years old. He said tearfully that he still loves his son, despite what has happened.

Police say George escaped June 1 when he slipped out of a courtroom holding cell in Chula Vista while awaiting trial in connection with a grocery store robbery. At the time, he faced charges under the federal Armed Career Criminal Act, which means he had at least three convictions for violent felonies.

He was awaiting trial Monday for that escape when he bolted from the prisoners van. Moments after Monday’s escape and fatal attack, passers-by in a neighborhood filled with theaters and trendy restaurants were stunned by what they called a lethargic police response in removing the victim’s body.

Kimberly Boden, a tenant in a nearby apartment building, said Champion lay bleeding in the street for “four to six hours,” with arms flung out beneath a movie marquee that read “Innocent Blood and Rapid Fire.”

Boden and Jesus Velazguez, a waiter at Trattoria La Strada Pizza Bar, a restaurant near the crime scene, complained that some of the estimated three dozen officers in the area stood within inches of Champion’s body as they chatted and drank coffee but failed to cover him.

Boden said Champion died “without dignity.”

Police said Tuesday that it is customary for officers not to disturb a crime scene until investigators can document, recover and measure all evidence. They said it ordinarily takes a “few hours” to complete such work but that, in this case, it took “several hours.”

Pamela Champion, the victim’s wife of four years, told The Times on Tuesday: “I keep thinking he’ll come back, but I know he’s not. I wish I could have held him, could have seen him again. I wonder what was going through his head when it happened. It must have been terrible for him.”

She told KNSD on Tuesday: “He was my best friend, a good man. I loved him very much. I’m just so angry that he has been taken away from me.”

Pamela Champion works as a travel agent and said she and her husband had enjoyed traveling together and sharing their interest in Irish culture, including folk dancing. She said he once told her that if he died before she did, he wanted a piper to play “Amazing Grace” at the funeral.

Asked about George, she said: “I want him to pay for what he did. I want him to suffer. . . . I’m just outraged that people can do that. He is just a heartless, evil person.”

Pamela Clark, a neighbor of the Champions in Hillcrest, said they “were a very happy couple . . . each other’s soul mates.”

“He was a good person,” Clark said. “He would open his arms and welcome you.”

The couple had lived in the neighborhood only four months, she said.

Champion worked for a Del Mar auto stereo shop, whose proprietor described him Tuesday as a trustworthy, loyal employee.

“He was a straight shooter. He called them as he saw them,” said Mike Vignato, who hired Champion two months ago as a salesman for Rancho Car Care & Stereo Center. He said Champion, a four-year Navy veteran, was “one of the nicest guys you’ll ever meet.”

Vignato said the company has started a trust fund at Home Savings to help Champion’s family with bills and funeral expenses.

Witnesses in the area Monday night said Champion and a friend named Mark had been at the Blarney Stone Pub and Brewski’s, two Gaslamp Quarter bars, before leaving in Champion’s car. They played darts at the pub before leaving to watch “Monday Night Football” at Brewski’s.

George had been in federal custody but also had state charges filed against him, said Jim Painter, San Diego County’s corrections director. On Monday, George was at an El Cajon court hearing on the state charges, and the Sheriff’s Department was bringing him back to the MCC when he broke out of the van.

“He was under our supervision only during transportation,” Painter said. “Otherwise, he was under supervision by the federal Bureau of Prisons.

“He kicked the doors of the van until they were sprung and he slithered out of his waist chains,” Painter said. “It’s not the first time someone slipped out of chains.”

Bill Robinson, a spokesman for the San Diego Police Department, said Tuesday that apparently false sightings had placed George as “close as East San Diego and Chula Vista, as far south as the border and as far north as Poway and Escondido.”

But, Robinson said, “obviously, none of the sightings have panned out.”

Dan Greenblat, spokesman for Sheriff Jim Roache, said Tuesday that George had hinted before at attempting his escape.

“What you had is a real determined inmate who was scheduled for trial (Tuesday) who said he would never be sent to jail and was determined to avoid that,” Greenblat said. “He was extremely dangerous. Where there’s a will there’s a way, and he found a way to get out.

“We’re looking at all our systems to see whether or not there was a problem. How did he get free of his waist chains? We had transported him 22 previous times and there was no tendency toward violence.”

Greenblat said Deputy Werner “violated no policy. We have one deputy for every two inmates and two deputies for every three inmates. The other inmate in the van, who is semi-ambulatory, saw George slipping his waist chains but didn’t say anything for fear of being killed.”

Greenblat said Werner’s previous duties included the Las Colinas jail, court services, the Santee patrol station and transportation. She had been rated above average by superiors.

Werner was “fully qualified to be a deputy sheriff,” Painter said. “That’s not even an issue in my mind.”

Werner had done everything within policy, Painter said, and should be praised for chasing a violent criminal much larger than herself.

“I think she’s a hero,” Painter said. “She did what any of us would do under the circumstances.”

Times staff writers Anne Baker, Mark Platte and Nora Zamichow contributed to this report.