UC worker held as prison escapee

A technician at UC Santa Barbara has been arrested and awaits extradition to Michigan, where he is listed as one of the state’s most wanted prison escapees, police said Monday.

Roger Crona, 61, was working in the university’s biological sciences machine shop under the name Jason Vonstraussenburg, according to a spokesman for the Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s Department. He had been living in the Santa Barbara area for several years.

Crona fled a prison in Jackson, Mich., in 1972. He had been convicted in 1967 of receiving stolen property and in 1971 of altering a license plate and possessing forged registration. An anonymous caller contacted the Sheriff’s Department about Crona last week, according to spokesman Alex Tipolt.

-- Steve Chawkins