California officials are looking for six prisoners who escaped from a county jail on Sunday after climbing their walls with a homemade rope, police said.
The prisoners, all 19 to 22 years old, were reported missing from their cells for the first time just before midnight, Merced County sheriff’s office said in a statement. Investigators said the men had access to the facility’s roof, where they used a “homemade rope to scale the side of the prison,” said the sheriff’s office.
The six missing inmates are: Jorge Barron, 20; Gabriel Francis Coronado, 19; Manuel Allen Leon, 21; Andres Nunez Rodriguez Jr., 21; Fabian Cruz Roman, 22; and Edgar Eduardo Venture, 22.
A task force was formed to track the fugitives. No other details were immediately available.
Merced is a city with almost 85,000 inhabitants, about 115 miles east of San Jose.
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