Two inmates who escaped from a maximum security jail in southern California were captured near a Whole Foods in San Francisco on Saturday, after a weeklong manhunt that spanned nearly the entire state.

“The entire state can breathe a sigh of relief because we have the other two dangerous individuals back in custody,” Orange County sheriff Sandra Hutchens said at a morning press conference. The third escaped inmate, 43-year-old Bac Duong, surrendered to police in Santa Ana on Friday.

Duong told investigators that he had been in northern California with his fellow escapees, 20-year-old Jonathan Tieu and 37-year-old Hossein Nayeri, before giving himself up. But Hutchens said it was ultimately the tip of a bystander that led police to the men.

At about 8.50am, San Francisco police officers were “handling an unrelated medical aid call in the area of Haight and Stanyon”, Hutchens said, when a woman pointed out a suspicious white van in the parking lot of a Whole Foods on the edge of Golden Gate park. Earlier in the week, police said they believed the inmates had stolen a white van and were heading north.

As police approached the van, Hutchens said, Nayeri fled on foot from the lot. He was caught, and when police returned to the white van they “discovered the other escapee, Jonathan Tieu, hiding in the van”.

Officers also found “a number of .380 ammunition rounds” but no weapon, the sheriff added. The inmates will be moved to a county jail before their eventual return to Orange County custody. “Because they are escape risks, they will be housed in a different area and a different manner,” Hutchens said.

She and other law enforcement and local leaders thanked the media for helping raise awareness of the escape, and said that the San Francisco woman who tipped off police told them the van looked like the one from news reports. The citizen should be “eligible for some money”, if not an award, Hutchens said.

The first major break in the hunt for the inmates came with Duong’s surrender on Friday, when he walked up to a friend’s southern California auto shop and had her call police. He then stood smoking a cigarette until police arrested him.

The three men escaped on 22 January from a maximum security facility in Santa Ana, after cutting a hole in a metal grate and crawling through plumbing tunnels on to the building’s roof. The three pushed aside barbed wire lining the building and then rappelled down four storeys with a rope made of bed linen.

Investigators said they still do not know how the inmates acquired sharp enough tools to carve their way through grating and plumbing, though they suspect the inmates had outside help. It took jail staff 16 hours to realize the three men were missing, but so far no prison staff have faced discipline for the escape, officials said.

The escape was “one of a sheriff’s worst nightmares”, Hutchens said. “My fear was that someone in the community was gonna get hurt because they really had nothing to lose.”

Lee Tran, whose family owns Auto Electric Rebuilders, said Duong came to the shop looking for Tran’s sister, Theresa, and told her that he wanted to surrender.

“He was scared for his life, pretty much,” Tran said. “That’s why he asked one of our people to turn him in.”

Tran said his sister called 911, and Duong stayed outside until authorities came.

“She was crying her head off,” said Trach Tran, her father, who was also there. “Everybody was scared.”

Lee Tran said his sister’s boyfriend knew Duong, and federal authorities had come by to speak with her earlier this week because she might have visited Duong in jail.

Duong, Tieu and Nayeri were all awaiting trial in jail for separate violent crimes. They were held in a dormitory with about 65 other men, about 30 miles south-east of Los Angeles. They will not be jailed together, the officials said.

On Thursday, authorities arrested a woman who taught English inside the jail. Nooshafarin Ravaghi, 44, gave Nayeri a paper copy of a Google Earth map that showed an aerial view of the entire jail compound, Hallock said.



She was booked on suspicion of being an accessory to a felony and was being held pending a court appearance set for Monday. It wasn’t clear if she had a lawyer.

Ravaghi and Nayeri also exchanged “personal and close” handwritten letters, but Hallock could not say if the two were romantically involved.

“It wasn’t the relationship that you would expect between a teacher and an inmate in a custody setting,” he said.

Duong, a native of Vietnam, has been held since last month on charges of attempted murder and assault with a deadly weapon.

It was the first escape in nearly three decades from the Central men’s jail, built in 1968, which holds 900 men.

Tieu is charged with murder and attempted murder in a 2011 gang shooting. Nayeri had been held without bond since September 2014 on charges of kidnapping, torture, aggravated mayhem and burglary.