Thread: Az - Official thinks escapee has fled to Mexico

Official thinks escapee has fled to Mexico
by JJ Hensley - Feb. 20, 2009 12:00 AM

Inmates have escaped Maricopa County Sheriff's Office custody a handful of times in the past five years, and they were frequently captured within days - if not hours - of their escape.

But the escape of convicted child rapist Adrian Gonzalez Cruz from the Superior Courthouse on Tuesday was unique: He walked out wearing street clothes shortly after 1 p.m. and blended in with the downtown Phoenix lunch crowd.

Surveillance footage released Thursday shows a man believed to be Cruz casually walking to the elevators on the seventh floor and entering the street a minute later.
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Cruz, already serving a life sentence for raping a 9-year-old, was on trial for additional charges of kidnapping, sexual assault and sexual contact with a minor.

As soon as deputies realized Cruz was missing from his holding room, they established a perimeter and began combing the area. But by the time they locked down the courthouse and brought in help from other agencies, including Phoenix police K-9 units, to search the area near First Avenue and Jefferson Street, Cruz's trail was cold.


Sighting reported

Deputies had received a tip that Cruz might have been in the area of a salvage yard at Sixth and Watkins streets, and surveillance footage likely proved the tipster right. But beyond that, the lack of other clues emerging in the past few days has left Bill Knight, the sheriff's deputy chief of investigations, with one lingering thought: "Best guess? He's probably in Mexico, but that's based on nothing more than my own suspicions and my own instincts," he said.

Cruz came to the United States illegally from Michoacan, Mexico, sometime in the late 1990s, investigators believe.

But even if Cruz fled across the border, that's not necessarily a roadblock, said Matt Hershey a deputy U.S. marshal in Phoenix. The federal agency frequently assists local police as the two countries communicate frequently about fugitives who move back and forth.

"We do it all the time; we get people out of Mexico, and we get people for Mexico," Hershey said. "It happens on almost a daily basis here."

Investigators take the same systematic approach to catching escapees as they do at the outset of a murder investigation, Knight said: Deputies reconstruct the inmate's life, interests, local contacts and patterns.

In Cruz's case, deputies first had to confirm the inmate had actually escaped and wasn't moved to another room, hiding in the court complex or in the custody of some other agency that caught him on the way out the door, Knight said.

That kind of delay isn't unusual, he said, whether inmates walk off their work-release jobs or slip through a fence around Tent City. It could be hours before deputies discover they're missing.

"I think most critical would ultimately be, in this one, the guy is obviously on foot. Where is he attempting to go? Does he have local ties or international ties? And where is he going to find the means to get to those destinations?" Knight said.

Investigators dug through Cruz's prison and jail cells looking for clues; others combed through jail phone records looking for contacts. Deputies set up surveillance outside homes where Cruz had acquaintances.


Letting their guard down

Investigators hope Cruz has slipped into a relative comfort zone. "A lot of times when it first happens, they run real hard, and they don't have time to settle down," Hershey said. "Sometimes it's better if they settle down a little bit and get in a routine of some sort."

It'll take the same combination of luck and diligence to capture Cruz, authorities said. They were confident he would ultimately return to serve his life sentence in an Arizona prison.

"We're going to catch this guy based on somebody grabbing him and bringing him in to be fingerprinted," Knight said.


http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/ ... t0220.html

This animal needs to be caught! How in the heck did he get away in the first place? He just walked out??? He raped a child!! He should face life in prison at best, and when he dies he should be shipped home in a cheap pine box. The pervert doesn't even deserve to be buried on American soil.