PLACER COUNTY, Calif. — Placer County Sheriff Wayne Woo stood in front of cameras July 10 to tell the community that elected him the manhunt for one of the county’s most dangerous inmates was over.
Inmate Eric Abril, who is awaiting trial on murder charges, was captured by deputies after a massive 33-hour manhunt around Roseville and Rocklin.
The sheriff said Abril managed to escape while on a trip away from the county jail for hospital treatment. Woo owned the crisis at the news conference.
“As the sheriff of this entire county, I take full responsibility for this incident,” said Woo. “This should never have happened.”
Responding to a half dozen requests for public records made by ABC10 under state transparency laws, the sheriff’s office said it decided to withhold nearly all the information requested.
The lack of openness from the sheriff's office has raised further questions about the handling of the case and the extent to which crucial information is being withheld from the public.
“The public generally has a right to the full story, not just the official story,” said attorney David Loy with the First Amendment Coalition. “That's exactly why we have a Public Records Act so we can verify what politicians promise to us.”
ABC10 reached out to the sheriff's office for comment on this story but received no response before our deadline.
The sheriff’s office released only a single page under the Public Records Act: an “end of watch” report from days before the escape on July 6, the day Abril was transferred to the hospital.
The page shows a deputy was assigned to guard Abril and he was transported by ambulance, but the vast majority of details on the page were blacked out.
Back in April, officers tried to serve a search warrant on Abril in a Roseville Park. He’s accused of shooting one of the officers, and a couple he took hostage. James MacEgan, the husband, died.
Despite the seriousness of his alleged crimes, Abril was reclassified in May as needing only one deputy as a guard for trips away from the jail. The sheriff’s office declined to provide any records related to how that determination was made.
The Placer County Sheriff’s Office also kept secret basic information about its own staffing levels around the time of the escape.
Loy was especially troubled by the fact the Placer County Sheriff’s Office refused to release its duty rosters, the list of who was working around the time of the escape. The agency also refused to share its own minimum staffing levels.
The sheriff’s office argued releasing these facts wouldn’t be in the public interest, despite the fact the sheriff personally fielded questions about them.
“I have no information to believe that this was at all related to staffing levels,” said Woo at the July 10 news conference.
“The public has a right to know [the staffing levels] whether the sheriff made that statement or not,” said Loy. “The public always has an interest in knowing who's on the public payroll. Are they doing their job? How are they being managed? How are they being allocated? It's our tax dollars.”
The response to ABC10’s records requests did provide one new detail: the sheriff’s office said it does not have a written agreement with Sutter Roseville Medical Center regarding the management of in-custody patients.
In addition to his existing murder case, Abril now faces additional charges of escape.
