Adrian Cruz
The top judge in Maricopa County has hired outside investigators to look into a security breach that allowed a convicted child rapist to escape from custody last week at a downtown Phoenix courthouse.
Convicted rapist Adrian Gonzalez Cruz escaped his shackles, a locked room and the county’s main court complex on Feb. 17 and is still on the loose. He had been sentenced to life in prison for raping and impregnating a 9-year-old girl, but was on trial for two other attacks that came to light after his arrest. Cruz simply walked out the front door of the courthouse unnoticed after slipping out of custody.
In an interview today, Maricopa County presiding Judge Barbara Rodriguez Mundell revealed she has hired a Virginia-based firm called the National Center for State Courts to look at security measures at the court complex. Though she emphasized detainee security is “solely” the job of the sheriff’s office, Mundell said she hired the investigators “because I don’t want this to happen again.”
“When I heard about the incident, we immediately called them and asked if they could send their security experts to come and assess the situation and give recommendations on how best to improve so that this doesn’t happen again,” Mundell said this morning.
The investigators will perform an audit of security at the courthouses and submit a report to the superior court, Mundell said. The team from the National Center for State Courts arrived today and will be “doing their investigation, their assessment” in days to come, she said.
Mundell said she had “been assured that the sheriff would be cooperative” with the investigation, even as the agency is performing its own search to find Cruz. The sheriff’s office could not be reached for comment this afternoon.
Photos and videos released last week by the courts show the room where Cruz was being held when he fled, as well as his escape route. An eyelet held his shackle to the floor in a small room on the 7th floor of the East Court Building. Maricopa County Sheriff’s Deputy Chief Dave Trombi told the Arizona Republic last week that Cruz escaped on a lunch break, at a time when no deputies were standing guard outside the door.
Mundell described the center performing the investigation as “a think tank” for court systems like Maricopa County’s. “They’re the gurus of state courts,” she said. It was unclear when the final report on the courthouse security would be ready.