2 More Escapees Snared; 2 Still at Large : Jailbreak: One is found in Downtown L.A., another in a Santa Clarita field. Residents near Pitchess jail express fear for their safety.

Law enforcement officers captured two more escapees Monday from a mass jailbreak in Castaic but kept hunting for two others--including a Salvadoran gang member convicted of manslaughter--as some worried residents near the jail checked locks and readied guns.

One of the snared inmates, a murder suspect, was arrested at a seedy hotel on Los Angeles’ Skid Row, about 45 miles southeast of the Santa Clarita Valley jail. The other, a drug suspect, was taken into custody in a field across from a California Highway Patrol station in Santa Clarita, about a mile from the lockup.

The two were among 14 who scaled a razor-wire-topped fence Sunday at the Peter J. Pitchess Honor Rancho in the biggest breakout in county history. Ten escapees were caught within hours.

The mass escape prompted county Supervisor Michael Antonovich on Monday to angrily reproach the Sheriff’s Department and demand an explanation.

“There’s no excuse for inmates escaping from that facility,” said Antonovich, who represents the area around the sprawling northern Los Angeles County jail. “The Sheriff’s Department completely failed in their effort to protect the community.”

Murder suspect Eric Reed, 24, was captured after about 50 sheriff’s deputies and Los Angeles police officers, acting on a tip, surrounded the aging Hotel Cecil about 4:30 p.m. and quickly sealed all exits.

Reed faces trial next month in a drug-related gun attack on Skid Row that left one man dead and two adults and a child wounded, said Sgt. Tom Sears of the Sheriff’s Department’s Special Investigations Bureau.

Searching the hotel room by room, the officers eventually found Reed in Room 412, where he was arrested without incident, Sears said.

“He was standing in there with his back to us, his hands behind his head,” Sears said. “He didn’t say a thing. He seemed to know what we wanted.”

Reed apparently flagged down a motorist Sunday morning near the Magic Mountain amusement park off the Golden State Freeway, said Deputy George Ducoulombier, a Sheriff’s Department spokesman. Although wearing only his underwear and bleeding from razor-wire cuts, Reed told the driver that he had just been beaten and robbed. The driver dropped him off in central Los Angeles, the deputy said.

Deputies said the second captured inmate, 24-year-old Fernando Arroyo, was arrested about noon, dressed in a soiled T-shirt and light-blue underwear, after a construction worker in Santa Clarita called deputies when Arroyo asked to use a telephone. Arroyo later was spotted in a field across from the CHP station and taken into custody.

Meanwhile, more than 50 deputies scoured rugged terrain around the jail with helicopters, horses and bloodhounds as they continued to search for the two remaining escapees. But “as time progresses, there’s a greater and greater chance they made it out of the area,” Sheriff’s Capt. Jeff Springs said.

The inmates still at large were identified as Luis A. Galdamez, 28, and Walter R. Padilla, 22.

Galdamez, a Salvadoran gang member, was charged with fatally shooting one man in 1993 and another in 1994. Last month, he pleaded guilty to one count of manslaughter and to a handgun offense and was sentenced Thursday to 11 years in state prison. Padilla was sentenced Friday to seven years in state prison for a carjacking.

Sheriff’s officials said they believe that the jailbreak was planned. “When you have 14 inmates involved in one escape, you probably have some communications taking place over several days,” Ducoulombier said.

The prisoners apparently used a bunk bed to reach a 24-by-14-inch hole in the ceiling of a 96-inmate holding facility. The opening had been created in February during an inmate disturbance.

Deputies had patched the hole with a piece of sheet metal, securing it with screws. But inmates were able to remove the metal and escape into a heating duct where they removed another screen to gain access to the roof.

The escapees climbed the nearby 25-foot-high fence topped with razor wire, using bedsheets and jail uniforms to cover the wire and wearing socks as protective gloves. The escape was detected during a routine check of the jail grounds, when a deputy spotted several inmates scaling the fence.

Ducoulombier said an investigation is under way to determine the location of the lone deputy assigned to guard the 96 inmates when the escape occurred.

“There was some type of disturbance during that time frame,” Ducoulombier said. “Whether or not it was a diversionary tactic we don’t know.”

The mass escape clearly unnerved some residents of the suburban enclaves around the jail.

Lisa Galvin, 40, who lives in a quiet development of Spanish-style homes known as North Bluffs, said she had not been fazed by previous escapes, which involved mostly minimum-security inmates. But on Sunday, she discovered two of the maximum-security escapees hiding under her BMW. They ran when she spotted them and were captured shortly thereafter.

Since then, she said, she has been carrying a handgun in the house, so “if they do come back I’m ready for them.”

Another North Bluffs resident, Veronica Lopez, said she moved to the neighborhood from Palmdale with her husband and three young children three months ago.

“I thought it was better down here,” she said. “I don’t think I want to be here anymore. I think we’ll be better away from jails, especially with kids.”

A 35-year-old former aerospace worker who lives nearby said he was prepared for any escapees who might turn up on his doorstep.

“I’ve got my 12-gauge and my .357,” said the man, who spoke from behind a screen door and would not give his name.

But other residents took the escapes in stride.

“It’s like what people say about California and the earthquakes,” Edie Baker said. “You still love it here.”

Sheriff’s Chief Mark Squiers, who is in charge of custody operations for the northern county, said officials plan to “remedy the weaknesses” in the 2,800-acre jail complex.

Squiers said inmates have been removed from the facility where the breakout occurred, the hole in the ceiling has been repaired and the area has been inspected for additional flaws. Officials are considering a number of other measures to boost security, including additional fencing, he said.

County supervisors last fall allocated $4.3 million to the Sheriff’s Department to increase security patrols and to build a second fence around the minimum-security facility at Pitchess because of numerous escapes. But the low-security facility was recently closed because of budget constraints.

Authorities said inmates facing lengthy prison terms have little to lose by attempting to escape. Although an escape can add up to three years to a sentence, it usually adds only about eight months to a year because of credits for good behavior in prison, said David Demerjian, head of the hard-core gang unit of the county district attorney’s office.

Times staff writers Jack Cheevers and Eric Malnic and correspondent Mark Sabbatini contributed to this story.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Jail Break and Captures Ten men were captured within hours of the early Sunday morning escape from Peter J. Pitchess Honor Rancho. Two others were captured later and two remained at large as of Monday evening.

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Path of Escape 1. Inmates break out of North Facility complex at 3:15 a.m. Sunday. 2. They scale barbed- wire fence surrounding facility. 3. Escapees cross two low cattle fences along dry creek bed and run to Golden State Freeway. 4. They cross freeway into housing development. *

The Facility Peter J. Pitchess Honor Rancho last week held 9,012 inmates, 326 over its maximum capacity, requiring some inmates to sleep on bedrolls on the floor. *

Facility Totals Population: Approximately 9,000 men. Maximum Capacity: 8,686. *

North Facility Population: 1,614 men. Maximum Capacity: 1,600 Design: Maximum security *

The Captures Seven inmates have been captured outside the complex. 6. Kyeron Bennett, 20. 7. Mario S. Mendez, 25. 8. Daniel Vences, 22. 9. Guillermo V. Godinez, 19. 10. Manuel A. Olmedo, 22. 11. Fernando Arroyo, 24. 12. Eric M. Reed, 24. Source: Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department