11:45 AM (BCN): Two juvenile inmates squeezed out of a roughly 1-square-foot window in their cell and somehow got past a 20-foot barbed wire fence to escape from San Francisco’s juvenile hall on Tuesday night, authorities said today.
The escape was reported at 9:54 p.m. at the Youth Guidance Center at 375 Woodside Ave., near Laguna Honda Hospital.
The inmates, two boys ages 12 and 16, escaped from a unit reserved for lower-risk and younger youth, said William Siffermann, San Francisco’s chief juvenile probation officer.
The boys smashed the small window with a metal fixture that was in their room and then squeezed through the opening. Siffermann said investigators do not yet know how the juveniles got past the fence.
“There no evidence that we see right now that suggests that the barbed wire was compromised or anything being snagged,” he said. “We’re still determining whether someone would have scurried under the fence.”
Siffermann said the 16-year-old boy was in custody for a probation violation and the 12-year-old was there for a property-related offense.
The boys were last seen wearing inmate garb—sweatshirts and khakis—and “wouldn’t have traditional footwear,” Siffermann said.
He said they most likely escaped wearing slippers or socks.
The boys had yet to be found as of this morning, and their parents have been notified of the escape.
9:20 AM: Details are still scarce, but according to ABC7, police are on the lookout for two kids who escaped from a San Francisco juvenile detention facility Tuesday night.
The two reportedly broke out of the “Youth Guidance Center” (AKA “juvie”) on Woodside Avenue at around 10 last night.
The escapees, two boys aged 12 and 16, per the Ex “are not high-risk youth,” per the Weekly.
They reportedly bashed through a small window and scaled a 20 foot fence to escape the facility.
In a report from early Wednesday morning, ABC7 says that “officers searched through the night.”
