SANTA ANA, Calif.—An inmate who organized a daring, elaborate Southern California jailbreak in 2016 was found guilty Thursday of the escape but acquitted of kidnapping a taxi driver while on the run, authorities said.
Jurors in Orange County Superior Court also convicted Hossein Nayeri, 44, of Newport Beach of stealing a van but acquitted him of kidnapping during a carjacking and lesser offenses, the district attorney’s office said in a statement.
On Jan. 22, 2016, Nayeri and two other men broke out of the Orange County Central Jail Complex in Santa Ana, prompting a weeklong manhunt.
Using smuggled tools, they cut through a metal grate in their maximum-security dorm cell, then climbed through plumbing shafts within the walls to reach the roof, where they rappelled down five stories using a rope made of bed linens, according to authorities and a cellphone video shot by Nayeri….