Sandy MaloneOrange County, CA – A high-risk sex offender released from jail on April 13 as part of California’s effort to empty correctional facilities due to coronavirus was re-arrested just four days later after he committed another deviant crime.
Rudy William Grajeda Magdaleno, 39, was arrested again on April 17 after he exposed himself at a Santa Ana parole resource center, KCAL reported.
Magdaleno had been in jail on a parole violation after he failed to charge his GPS monitor, but was released early despite a minimum 180-day sentence because of the threat of coronavirus in the state’s jails.
The convicted sex offender has a chilling criminal history that includes breaking into a home and exposing himself to an 11-year-old girl, masturbating in front of a female employee at a law office, and forcing a disabled person at a restaurant to perform oral sex on him, according to KCAL.
Orange County Sheriff Don Barnes said that he was forced to release 45 percent of the inmates in the Orange County Jail in April, FOX News reported.
Sheriff Barnes said his jail was not overcrowded and they are observing social distancing and quarantine guidelines, so there was no reason to release the high-risk sex offenders into the community because of the pandemic.
“These inmates were released by court order, and are not in any way connected to the measures I have taken to limit the spread of COVID-19 in the Orange County Jail,” the sheriff said. “We have responsibly created the capacity needed in the jail to house sex offenders and other dangerous criminals. I oppose efforts that excuse criminal behavior and jeopardize the safety of our community.”
Orange County District Attorney Todd Spitzer said the high-risk sex offenders were released by the order of Court Commissioner Joseph Dane, FOX News reported.
Spitzer was so concerned about the high-risk level of some of the released inmates that he sent out an alert into the community to warn people about seven specific sex offenders who were likely to re-offend, FOX News reported.
“These kinds of high-risk sex offenders are the most dangerous kind of criminal and the most likely to re-offend,” the district attorney said in a written statement. “They are doing everything they can to avoid detection by the parole officers assigned to monitor them so they can potentially commit additional sex offenses. These are not the kind of people who should be getting a break.”
Local news stations reported that the seven men ranged in age from 27 to 52 and all had a history of lewd offenses and multiple convictions, FOX News reported.
Magdaleno was on the district attorney’s list.
“The arrest of this dangerous sex offender just days after he walked out of jail demonstrates the court’s grave error in releasing him and six other high-risk sex offenders early,” Santa Ana Mayor Miguel Pulido said in a statement, KCAL reported.
Santa Ana police said they think Magdaleno committed other offenses during his four days of freedom and have asked the public to come forward with any information related to the sex offender’s activities.
Sheriff Barnes told KCAL that none of the seven high-risk sex offenders who were released should have been trusted as all of them had been charged with either removing a GPS monitoring device or failing to charge it so they could not be tracked.