Miami – A man accused of raping seven girls and women in the city’s Little Havana neighborhood escaped from jail by crawling through a ceiling vent and then climbing down from the roof using tied-together bed sheets, police said.
Police searched neighborhoods, airports, rail stations and ports for Reynaldo Rapalo, 34, who broke out of a Miami-Dade County jail on Tuesday night, police said. A man who tried to escape with him was caught after he jumped and broke his legs.
“We fully realize he represents the worst kind of threat possible to the streets of Miami,” Miami-Dade Police Director Robert Parker said. “There will be no stone unturned.”
Rapalo was awaiting trial after being arrested in 2003. He was charged with raping seven people, ages 11 to 79, and attempting to attack four others. If convicted, he could get life in prison.
He climbed through a vent in the 7-foot ceiling of his one-person cell on the sixth floor and made it to the roof on that level, jail spokeswoman Janelle Hall said. The building has roofs at different levels, and Rapalo used sheets to climb down each one, authorities said.
Rapalo had been caught after DNA evidence showed he tried to attack a woman hanging her laundry in the middle of the day, police said.
