Riverside County Escapee Is 6th in Year

A Cathedral City man awaiting trial on a bank robbery charge became the sixth person in a year to escape from the custody of the Riverside County sheriff.

Genaro Diaz, 29, scaled a razor-wire fence at the county jail in Banning early Tuesday and eluded a multi-agency manhunt.

“A violent criminal like this is surely dangerous,” Riverside County sheriff’s spokesman Sgt. Earl Quinata said. “We are working this aggressively.”

Diaz had previously been convicted of a 1995 carjacking in Cathedral City, said a spokeswoman for the Riverside County district attorney’s office.

Authorities declared him missing after a 12:30 a.m. bed check of the jail’s 650 inmates.

Diaz, who probably fled the jail grounds on foot, left torn pieces of inmate clothing atop the razor-wire-topped fence.

The jail is less than a mile south of an Interstate 10 onramp. Helicopters, officers with police dogs and about 20 members of other agencies, including the California Highway Patrol, joined the search.

Diaz was arrested June 9, 2004, six days after he allegedly robbed a Bank of America branch inside a Cathedral City grocery store.

His escape comes less than four months after murder suspect Steven Matthew Sanchez jumped from a moving sheriff’s patrol car taking him from a jail in Blythe to the county jail in Indio. Sanchez, charged with fatally shooting a 19-year-old man in Coachella in 2003, has not been found.

Last February, murder suspect Nathaniel Decarlo Sapp and three other inmates at the county’s detention center near Murrieta escaped by breaking down a utility door, climbing water pipes to the roof, then climbing down the 20-foot-high building using knotted bedsheets. All were caught within days.

The detention center escapes prompted a review of jail security policies at all county jails, said a sheriff’s official. And Tuesday, Sheriff Bob Doyle ordered another review of “the detainee’s ability to leave the facility,” said sheriff’s administrator Tom Freeman.

This review will also look at whether crowding and staffing levels at jails played a role in the escape. Since Jan. 1, “dramatic overcrowding” has meant that officials have released 341 inmates before their sentences were completed, Freeman said.