Convicted child rapist Adrian Gonzalez Cruz should have spent the rest of his life in prison.

But on Tuesday, he took advantage of inattentive Maricopa County sheriff's deputies and made a brazen lunchtime escape from the Maricopa County Superior Courthouse in downtown Phoenix.

He was still on the loose late Wednesday.

Cruz is on trial for additional charges of kidnapping, sexual assault and sexual contact with a minor.

His escape left victims living in fear and sheriff's officials evaluating the procedures governing how deputies detain inmates in court buildings.

Cruz was serving a life sentence with no chance of parole for 35 years after sexually assaulting his girlfriend's 9-year-old daughter in 2004. The mother allowed Cruz to take the girl riding in his ice-cream truck, where he sexually assaulted her.

The girl became pregnant, and because she was too young to carry the baby, she had an abortion.

For that crime, Cruz could have spent the rest of his life in the custody of the Arizona Department of Corrections.

But he was on trial for two other sexual assaults in 2003 - one on a girl younger than 15 - after his DNA was matched to those attacks, and a judge could add decades more to Cruz's prison stay if convicted.

That trial was nearing an end Tuesday when Cruz took advantage of a lapse in security, slipped from his restraints and walked out of the courthouse. He even stole a leather coat from a court commissioner's office in full view of at least one court employee.

The trial continued Wednesday without him.

On a busy day, as many as 800 jail inmates are transported from various jails to the Superior Court for hearings, according to Chief Deputy Dave Trombi.

Most are transported in jail uniforms, but those who are on trial can wear civilian clothing so that the jail stripes do not prejudice a jury.

The inmates remain handcuffed except when they are in the courtroom for trials. Then, they wear a "stun belt" that allows deputies to administer an electric shock and a leg brace that locks if the inmate tries to run.

Trombi said the policy is to remove the belt and brace when inmates are placed in holding rooms because "if they remove the cuffs, they can easily remove the brace and (belt) and use them as weapons."

Court had just broken for lunch on Tuesday when a deputy escorted Cruz to a holding room on the seventh floor of the East Court Building, where the deputy attached Cruz's handcuffs to a chain shackled to the floor.

The deputy left Cruz alone in the room, and when another deputy went to check on the inmate several minutes later, only the handcuffs and shackles remained, Trombi said.

"It appears at some point, Cruz was able to manipulate the handcuffs," Trombi said, adding that paper clips, staples and other materials readily available at a defense table can help an inmate spring free from handcuffs.

Investigators believe Cruz acted alone, Trombi said.

Sheriff's Office policy doesn't allow an inmate to be left unattended but doesn't address the specifics of deputies leaving an inmate unattended in a secure holding room.

Policy serves as a guideline but, Trombi said, a preliminary inquiry has left investigators with the sense that deputies could have strayed from some of those policies in an effort to accommodate busy Superior Court calendars.

A court employee, who asked not to be identified, saw Cruz enter a commissioner's chambers on the same floor and walk out with a leather jacket. He was wearing a white long sleeve button-down shirt, gray baggy pants with pinstripes and a black leather jacket, according to the Sheriff's Office.

The doors to the holding rooms are equipped with locks, but it's unclear whether the locks were used, Trombi said.

The Sheriff's Office has launched an internal inquiry into whether procedures were followed.

The two deputies involved remain at work and on the payroll, Trombi said, and will unless the investigation proves they deserve otherwise.

"We're not having a knee-jerk reaction," he said. "We need to find out what happened first."

By the time deputies learned of Cruz's disappearance and evacuated the courthouse, Cruz was gone.

Deputies have been contacting people Cruz knows in the Phoenix area, working with other agencies such as Border Patrol and the U.S. Marshals Office and warning Cruz's victims that he is at large.

One Phoenix woman received the phone call Tuesday night, less than a week after she testified that Cruz had kidnapped and sexually assaulted her in the summer of 2003.

She's been staying in her house, behind locked doors, ever since.

"His escape has me terrified," said the woman, whose identity is being withheld. "I don't want to be outdoors. I know what he's capable of."