Tehachapi News

Students take CCI escape in stride

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Reassured by a well-rehearsed crisis plan, students at Cummings Valley Elementary School were not fazed last week when the escape of an inmate from the nearby California Correctional Institution caused the day's schedule to be disrupted.

“Sometimes they miscount,” said one youngster a few days after minimum security inmate Jack Gayne escaped Dec. 1, triggering an immediate lockdown of the school.

“We knew it must have been an escape rather than a miscount when it went on longer than 10 minutes.

“We do a lot of drills so we can be ready.”

The students are getting more practice than usual lately, as another lockdown was called Friday  Dec. 5 from 8 to 8:35 a.m., because a bag of prison clothes  appeared on prison grounds in a place it was not supposed to be (Prison authorities, who found no one missing after their own lockdown and count, speculated the bag had fallen off a laundry truck). 

On the day of Gayne’s escape, teachers kept students in their rooms for a more than two hours, and lunch was delayed.

The lockdowns begin with a high level of security, with children sitting  on the floor with the lights off, away from the windows in the safest part of the room.  The teachers carry on with reading and lessons as officers go from room to room checking. Children who needed to use the restroom were escorted by an adult.

“We just ignored it after a while,” said one youngster.

Cummings Valley Principal David Spencer said, “the kids are really good. The parents are great. The prison always has great response.”

The school works closely with the prison, he said, and “I feel very secure.”

He said each classroom has an emergency store of healthy snack foods and water. He was not aware that any of the food had been accessed on the day of the long lockdown.

Spencer announces “We are going into lockdown” over the loudspeaker and eveeryone in the school knows what to do. He said that to reduce confusion and anxiety but to convey the proper urgency, they have chosen to use straightforward language instead of codes as some other schools do.

"Codes can be misinterpreted,” Spencer said.

The team sweeping the school included Spencer, officers from CCI, the Kern County Sheriff’s Office Tehachapi Substation, Tehachapi  and Bear Valley police departments and one parent of a student who is a California Highway Patrol officer.

Stolen truck

CCI notified area law enforcement agencies Dec. 1 that a minimum security inmate had stolen a state truck and escaped –- but he was well on his way to Bakersfield before the roads could be blocked.

Inmate Gayne, 40, of Torrance, helped himself to a white Chevy Silverado pickup he was working on at the prison motor pool and drove through a ranch-type fence outside the secure perimeter at approximately 10:45 a.m. Officers from four agencies apprehended him at 3:45 p.m. the same day in Bakersfield as he was making a phone call in a booth near a Texaco station on Weedpatch Highway.

CCI Acting Public Information Manager and Community Partnership Manager Brian Parriott said Gayne has been placed in temporary housing and the initial interviews relating to the event are completed.

“He has to be reclassified,” Parriott said. “We have to determine what level he has to be placed on as a result of his escape.”

Gayne was the lowest security Level 1 before his escape.

Parriot said he notified area law enforcement agencies appropriately and according to procedure following the confirmation by prison authorities that a prisoner had escaped.

The prison immediately sent an armed “escape team” to nearby Cummings Valley Elementary School to assist in lockdown in case Gayne had headed that direction.
 

“It’s the first thing we do,” Parriott said.

In  the event of an escape, Parriott said, under the direction of the interim emergency commander (incident commander), he notifies all area law enforcement agencies one by one, by telephone and fax, including the California Highway Patrol, the Sheriff’s Office and the Lancaster, Ridgecrest, Stallion Springs, Bear Valley and Tehachapi police departments.
 

He tells the agencies who, what happened, where and when, providing as much detail as possible, including the escapee’s facial hair and identifying marks.
 

"I give them the basic information and they decide if they want to be involved,” Parriott said. Most of them want more information during the phone call, he said, slowing the process down. At the same time, he fields calls from the media, which have picked up the story from various scanners, and prepares e-mailed press releases.  

The Tehachapi Police Department sent units to main intersections to intercept the escapee.
 

“We locked down the city,” said Tehachapi Police Department Sgt. Wyatt Empey. "We had units at Valley Boulevard and Highline… By the time they let us know, it was 45 minutes later [after the escape] and he was gone.”

The Bear Valley Police Department joined Sheriff’s deputies, CCI officers and four units from the Tehachapi Police Department to conduct a room-to-room search of Cummings Valley Elementary School at 11:58 a.m. The officers completed the search by 12:53, according to the Bear Valley Police Department, when they pronounced an “all clear.”

Went through fence

According to Parriott, Gayne was imprisoned  for “grand theft from Los Angeles County” and was scheduled to be released to parole in November 2012.

Parriott did not confirm the “grand theft” was “grand theft auto,” but other sources said it was and that Gayne’s record included carjacking.

Parriott said that Gayne was still in CCI custody at 9:15 a.m., when one of his supervisors observed him working on the truck, and came up missing when another round of supervisors checked between 9:30 and 10 a.m. At that point, the institution began a prisoner count and set up observation posts on the roads, Parriott said.

Gayne might have driven through the fence and over private property to Banducci Road, Parriott said, and from there perhaps down Tucker Road to the freeway.

Following his apprehension in Bakersfield, he was returned to CCI, where he will face an administrative hearing that could add up to 360 days to his sentence. If the Kern County District Attorney decides to take up the case, it could be longer.

“The court can pick up the case and go above and beyond what we do,” Parriott said.

Parriott said the team investigating the escape will look at Gayne's correspondence to find out if there is a specific reason that he bolted -- if he is under undue stress, if any appeals have been  filed or he made requests for interviews, for example, or if he has a sick child or there has been a death in his family.
 

Another investigative team is searching for evidence in the crime scene area -- "Which is huge," Parriott said. "From the motor pool area to where he cut through the fence... all the way to Bakersfield where the truck was located and he was caught. They are looking for evidence and information about how he made it out."

The investigators will "look at everything in his central file to see if the individual was at risk for escape. He will be psychiatrically evaluated. Each step takes time."

Inmates must meet state criteria to gain minimum security status and the right to work outside the secure perimeter, Parriott said.

Parriott said a prisoner last escaped from CCI in the 1990s.

CCI's  powerful electrified fences are constructed in two maximum security sections and the reception area of the prison, which currently houses about 5,600 prisoners, and are not in the area Gayne was working near the Level 1 yard.

Parriott said the prisoner escape alarms – a siren and yellow light on Hog Hill – worked as designed.

“The siren went off for three or four minutes,” he said. “I heard it.”
 

Single-handedly juggling the crush of calls back and forth and collecting facts in such an event is exacerbated by the state budget crunch which has left  Parriott, he said, with "no cell phone and no [business] cards. The state can't afford it."
 

He said he does have a pager that "works intermittently."
 

While Parriott is the primary information gatekeeper for such an event, another person is assigned to contacting neighbors of the prison who have requested to be notified in case of an escape, he said.

Personnel from the state Office of Correctional Safety, correctional officers from CCI, Kern County Sheriff’s deputies and Bakersfield police were involved in apprehending Gayne.