Security Checks Follow Inmates’ Recapture

A day after the last of four escapees from a Riverside County jail was captured, sheriff’s officials on Thursday began installing new locks and reexamining security designs at all their jails.

Accused murderer Nathaniel Decarlo Sapp, 18, the subject of a regional manhunt since Tuesday morning, was arrested in San Bernardino on Wednesday night, disguised as a woman and riding in a car with his mother and another woman.

Sapp “was trying to make it look like there were three women in the car,� said sheriff’s spokeswoman Shelley Kennedy-Smith. “He had on a brown, straight-haired ladies wig.�

Acting on tips from the public and evidence uncovered in the investigation, an FBI-led task force and San Bernardino police pulled over a Dodge Intrepid just after 8 p.m. near the West Highland Avenue exit of Highway 30. In the car and taken into custody were Sapp; his mother, Lisa Hinds, 37; and Hinds’ friend Stephanie Hale, 37.

Sapp, Hinds and Hale were booked into the Southwest Detention Center near Murrieta, the same facility from which Sapp and three other inmates escaped sometime after an 11:30 p.m. headcount Monday.

Sapp was booked on suspicion of escape from a correctional facility. Hinds and Hale were booked on suspicion of conspiracy to aid and abet a fugitive and acting as an accessory to a crime, Kennedy-Smith said. Their arraignment is scheduled for today.

The four inmates freed themselves by breaking down a utility door, climbing water pipes inside a wall to the roof and tossing knotted bedsheets over the side of the 20-foot-high building.

Sheriff’s deputies found the three other escapees -- an alleged carjacker, burglar and narcotics violator -- hiding together in a Perris home early Tuesday afternoon.

The breach in a facility considered maximum-security had jail officials at Southwest and facilities in Riverside, Indio, Banning and Blythe inspecting their security features.

“We want to make darn sure no one can ever [escape] our facilities again,� said Riverside County Assistant Sheriff Stanley Sniff. “There is no reason not to check and revisit everything having to do with security now.�

Sniff said the jails have assigned teams to analyze the layout of each facility. A team at Southwest has double-locked the doors leading to the pipe-filled wall and the roof, Sniff said.