2 Escapees in Custody, 2 Sought : Prisons: One is arrested in Newhall, the other at a Downtown hotel. Antonovich blasts the Sheriff’s Department for jailbreak from Pitchess Honor Rancho.

Authorities on Monday captured two more of the 14 inmates who escaped from the Peter J. Pitchess Honor Rancho, leaving two men still at large--as officials demanded an explanation for the county’s largest jailbreak.

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

More than 50 sheriff’s deputies continued their search throughout the Santa Clarita Valley, although “as time progresses, there’s a greater and greater chance they made it out of the area,” said Sheriff’s Capt. Jeff Springs. Meanwhile, others combed the Downtown Los Angeles area, where one inmate was recaptured Monday evening in a hotel.

Ten inmates were captured Sunday within hours of their escape.

The 11th fugitive, Fernando Arroyo, 24, a narcotics suspect, was arrested around noon Monday, dressed in a soiled T-shirt and a pair of light blue underwear. A construction worker in Newhall called sheriff’s deputies when Arroyo asked to use a telephone. He was spotted by authorities in an open field, across the street from the California Highway Patrol’s station in Newhall and about a mile from the Pitchess jail.

A 12th fugitive, murder suspect Eric M. Reed, 24, was arrested shortly before 6 p.m. in Downtown Los Angeles, authorities said. Acting on a tip received by Los Angeles police, about 50 sheriff’s deputies and LAPD officers surrounded the aging Hotel Cecil at 640 S. Main St. at about 4:30 p.m. and quickly sealed off the outside exits, according to Sgt. Tom Sears of the Sheriff’s Department’s Special Investigations Bureau.

“An informant thought he had seen (Reed) on the third, fourth or fifth floor, so we blocked off the stairways and elevators and started searching, room by room,” Sears said. “There are 700 rooms in that hotel, so we knew we might have to look at a lot of rooms.”

Knowing that Reed is a murder suspect, the officers moved cautiously, assuming that he had armed himself and would resist arrest. After checking every room on the third floor of the Skid Row hotel, the officers moved up to the fourth. Eventually, they reached Room 412.

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

Although Reed made no attempt to resist arrest, the arresting officers found a bayonet in his room, Sears said. The sergeant said the officers also found narcotics in the room.

Taken into custody, along with Reed, was an unidentified man Sears said had rented the room for the fugitive.

Sears said Reed faces trial for a pistol attack at Gladys Avenue and 7th Street two years ago that left one man dead and three people injured.

“It was a drug-related murder,” Sears said.

Sheriff’s Deputy George Ducoulombier said a man matching Reed’s description who was dressed in his underwear and bleeding from minor injuries--apparently cuts from scaling the jail’s barbed-wire fence--flagged down a driver Sunday morning off the Golden State Freeway near Magic Mountain.

“He said he had just been beaten and robbed,” Ducoulombier said. “Then he apparently asked for a ride to the central part of Los Angeles.”

The two inmates who remain at large are Luis A. Galdamez, 28--who was sentenced last week to state prison after pleading guilty to manslaughter--and convicted carjacker Walter R. Padilla, 22. Both are from Los Angeles.

Antonovich blasted Sheriff Sherman Block for the jail escape, demanding an explanation for the breach at the maximum-security facility. Block is expected to report his findings to supervisors today.

“There’s no excuse to have any type of violation of jail security,” Antonovich said. “I’ve asked the sheriff to make a report with recommended changes to prevent having this tragedy occur again.”

Antonovich said the slow pace of the state’s judicial system was partly to blame, with its huge backlog of criminal cases. He pointed out that two-thirds of the county’s jail inmates are people waiting for trials or sentencing.

As a result, the board last week passed a motion asking the state to reform the system so inmates can be moved more quickly on to state prison. “Hard-core criminals don’t belong in the County Jail,” Antonovich said.

Additional deputies have been assigned to the jail facility following the escape, which was discovered shortly after 3 a.m. Sunday.

Sheriff’s Department officials said Monday they believe 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 inmates apparently used a bunk bed to reach a 24-by-14-inch hole in the ceiling, possibly created in February during an inmate melee.

Sheriff’s officials had patched the hole with a piece of sheet metal and secured it with screws. But the inmates were able to remove the metal and escape into an air conditioning and heating duct. They escaped to the roof by removing a screen, authorities said.

The men climbed a nearby 25-foot razor-wire fence using bedding and jail uniforms to cover the wire, and wearing socks as protective gloves. During a routine check of the jail grounds, a sheriff’s deputy spotted four of the inmates near the fence.

Ducoulombier said his department is investigating the actions of the single deputy assigned to guard 96 inmates when the 14 escaped.

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

“We have been taught a lesson, obviously, by the inmates,” said Sheriff’s Chief Mark Squiers, who is in charge of custody operations for northern Los Angeles County. “We will remedy the weaknesses.”

Squiers said the hole in the ceiling of the Pitchess dorm has been repaired, and the entire jail has been inspected for other possible escape routes. He said officials are also considering other measures to boost security, including additional fencing.

The Board of Supervisors last fall allocated $4.3 million to the Sheriff’s Department to pay for projects that included construction of a second security fence around the minimum-security jail at Pitchess, which was closed in March due to budget cuts.

In nearby Santa Clarita, many residents said they were not too worried about the escape. “I can tell you right now that the Santa Clarita Valley is one of the safest places to be right now,” said Lori Howard, a justice deputy for Antonovich. “The rest of us should be scared because all of our deputies are up there now.”

Tips poured into the sheriff’s Santa Clarita substation, leading deputies on at least a dozen mostly fruitless searches throughout the Santa Clarita Valley.

Residents of a trailer park on Hasley Canyon Road, about a mile from the jail, spotted a man at about 9 a.m. believed to be murder suspect Luis A. Galdamez, carrying a bag of oranges and wearing a T-shirt and shorts.

Sheriff’s deputies then searched the hills around the park with horses, helicopters and bloodhounds for two hours, but they were unable to locate the man.

Times staff writer Eric Malnic contributed to this report.

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