O.C. sexual assault convict on the run

Authorities searched Friday for a hospital technician who fled an Orange County courthouse just as he was about to be found guilty of sexually assaulting six women in a maternity ward, at least the second time this year someone about to be convicted or freshly convicted has bolted from a county court.

Dante Arnaud, 41, of Santa Ana, who was free on $250,000 bail, had been ordered to stay in the courthouse Thursday as the three-day trial ended and jurors began their deliberations.

The jury convicted him of conducting an illegal medical exam and assaulting the women, said district attorney’s spokeswoman Susan Kang Schroeder.

Arnaud’s escape comes four months after a man jumped to his death from the ninth floor of the Santa Ana courthouse, hours after being convicted of child molestation. In that case, prosecutors had asked the judge to jail the man, partly out of concern that he was suicidal.

In another case, outside the reach of the courthouse, an on-duty Orange County sheriff’s deputy killed himself after learning he had been charged with molesting a 12-year-old boy. Prosecutors, believing he might be suicidal, had taken steps to keep the criminal charges against Deputy Gerald Stenger confidential.

In Arnaud’s case, he had been ordered by Superior Court Judge Richard Toohey to remain in the Santa Ana courthouse while the jury deliberated.

The jury was out about 35 minutes before finding him guilty on six counts of sexual battery by fraud and one count of sexual penetration by conducting an illegal medical examination.

The verdict was read and recorded even though Arnaud by then was missing. A no-bail warrant was issued for his arrest. He faces up to 13 years in state prison, prosecutors said.

The victims were assaulted in 2004 at Garden Grove Hospital Medical Center, where Arnaud had worked for five months, said defense attorney Chris Jensen. He said his client had been recommended for a raise the day he was arrested.

Arnaud was released on bail Oct. 15, 2004, and ordered to surrender his immigration green card, said Superior Court spokeswoman Carol Levitzky. He made every court appearance since his arrest, she said. Except when the verdict was announced.

“There was nothing at the time of trial, by his behavior, that warranted a change in the bail arrangement, and the district attorney never asked for a change,” Levitzky said. “Nobody had any reason to believe he was going to abscond.”

Jensen said his client, a Mexican national, was enjoying a new job outside the medical field and “constantly talked about his wife and two kids.” There were never any signs that Arnaud would flee, he said.

“At least he hasn’t turned out dead somewhere. That he may harm himself has worried me more than anything,” Jensen said. “But he never indicated he would do something like that.”

The defense attorney said his fears were prompted by the suicide of the Santa Ana man who jumped from the ninth floor of the courthouse in March, hours after he was convicted on three counts of molesting a girl.

Carlos Eduardo Tello, 53, a former Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department employee, had been allowed to remain free on $250,000 bail after his conviction in a Fullerton courtroom. He faced up to 20 years in prison.

Tello apparently left the Fullerton courthouse and drove to the one in Santa Ana, then jumped to his death.

His death led to finger-pointing by district attorney and court officials, who argued over whether Superior Court Judge Greggory Prickett had been adequately warned that Tello, a green-card holder from Guatemala, was suicidal.

Prosecutors said they asked Prickett to order Tello taken into custody if he was convicted because he was a flight risk and had written a suicide note when he was arrested in 2006. Instead, the judge ordered him to go home and retrieve his passport, which he surrendered to the court. Prickett scheduled a sentencing hearing later in the week.

Prickett, citing judicial ethics, declined to comment on his ruling, but court officials at the time said that prosecutors made no formal motions to revoke Tello’s bail and never produced the suicide note in court. Tello’s lawyer said he had not seen the 2006 suicide note.

Court spokeswoman Levitzky and district attorney’s spokeswoman Schroeder said the Tello and Arnaud cases are different and do not stand as evidence that the court needs to alter its treatment of defendants who have been or might soon be convicted of certain crimes. In Arnaud’s case, prosecutors could not ask that his bail be revoked unless he was convicted, if they asked at all, Schroeder said.

At the time that Arnaud fled, “he was still legally eligible for bail because he hadn’t been convicted of anything,” Levitzky said.

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hgreza@latimes.com

Times staff writer Hector Becerra contributed to this report.