An inmate who organized a daring, elaborate Southern California jailbreak in 2016 was uncovered guilty Thursday of the escape but acquitted of kidnapping a taxi driver although on the run, authorities said.
Jurors in Orange County Top-quality Court docket also convicted Hossein Nayeri, 44, of Newport Seashore of stealing a van but acquitted him of kidnapping all through a carjacking and lesser offenses, the district attorney’s office environment claimed in a assertion.
On Jan. 22, 2016, Nayeri and two other adult males broke out of the Orange County Central Jail Intricate in Santa Ana, prompting a weeklong manhunt.
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Working with smuggled equipment, they reduce via a metal grate in their greatest-safety dorm mobile, then climbed by way of plumbing shafts inside of the walls to attain the roof, the place they rappelled down five tales making use of a rope produced of mattress linens, in accordance to authorities and a cellphone movie shot by Nayeri.
The men later on kidnapped a 72-12 months-aged unlicensed taxi driver. The driver was sometimes held at gunpoint as he drove the men about. The males then stole a van and took both motor vehicles and the driver alongside as they drove hundreds of miles north to the San Francisco Bay Area, authorities reported.
Hossein Nayeri listens to a choose in his trial on Aug. 16, 2019, in Newport Seashore, California. (Paul Bersebach/The Orange County Sign-up by means of AP,File)
One escapee, Bac Tien Duong, afterwards feared that the driver would be killed and fled with him again to Southern California, authorities reported.
Nayeri and Jonathan Tieu ended up arrested the future day in San Francisco following a gentleman acknowledged them from media studies, prosecutors stated.
Duong was convicted of escape and kidnapping in 2021. Tieu is awaiting demo for the escape, prosecutors reported.
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At the time of his escape, Nayeri was awaiting demo on fees that he and two friends kidnapped, tortured and mutilated a cannabis dispensary owner in 2012. The proprietor was kidnapped from a Newport Beach house for the reason that the robbers falsely thought he had buried $1 million in the Mojave Desert, prosecutors stated.
He was beaten with rubber piping, stunned with a Taser, burned with a blowtorch and last but not least his penis was lower off before the robbers fled, prosecutors said.
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Nayeri fled to Iran. But he was later caught in the Czech Republic and extradited. In 2020, he was sentenced to everyday living in prison with no likelihood of parole.
Nayeri’s co-defendants also had been convicted.