Police Hunt Escaped Serial Rape Suspect

A man accused of raping seven girls and women in Miami’s Little Havana neighborhood escaped from jail by crawling through a ceiling vent and then climbing down from the roof using tied-together bedsheets, police said Wednesday.

Police searched neighborhoods, airports, rail stations and ports for Reynaldo E. Rapalo, 34, who broke out of a Miami-Dade County Jail on Tuesday night, police said. A man who tried to escape with him was caught after he jumped and broke his legs.

“We fully realize he represents the worst kind of threat possible to the streets of Miami,” Miami-Dade Police Director Robert Parker said. “There will be no stone unturned.”

Rapalo was awaiting trial after being arrested in 2003. He was charged with raping seven people, ages 11 to 79, and attempting to attack four others. If convicted, he could get life in prison.

He climbed through a vent in the 7-foot ceiling of his single-man cell on the sixth floor and made it to the roof on that level, jail spokeswoman Janelle Hall said. The building has roofs at different levels, and Rapalo used sheets to climb down each one, authorities said.

The vent was supposed to be locked, but its door had been pried off. Bars blocking the vent’s opening to the roof were cut, officials said.

The rapes kept Little Havana on edge for a year. On Wednesday afternoon, stores there had taped wanted posters to their front doors.

Ena Hernandez, 26, who works at a jewelry store, said she was unnerved to learn of the escape. “Imagine, a girl walking alone to her car,” she said. “It makes me want to watch my back more.”

Rapalo was caught after DNA evidence linked him to an attack on a woman, police said.