Site icon California Examiner

Police From Rocklin Find Eric Abril Hiding Out In A Creekbed… A Murder Suspect Has Been Caught

Jasmeen Kaur
Police From Rocklin Find Eric Abril Hiding Out In A Creekbed

After a 30-hour manhunt that began early Sunday morning when murder suspect Eric James Abril escaped from Roseville’s Sutter Medical Center, he was apprehended at 12:20 p.m. on Monday by police in Rocklin. Over the police radio, an officer was heard saying, “If you run, you will be shot.” “Are you getting it?”

“His hands are up,” the officer continued. “He’s listening to commands. He’s walking toward us. It’s confirmed it’s him. Tattoos on his arms, matches the description, orange pants.”

Abril, 35, was brought into custody at Antelope Creek behind 5855 Zion Court, according to radio traffic, following a night-long hunt for him by scores of police personnel who probed through tough, rocky terrain using dogs, drones and planes.

Scanner traffic alerted authorities, and the Placer County Sheriff’s Office announced the arrest through Twitter.

“UPDATE: Fugitive Eric Abril is in custody,” the tweet read.

“It’s been a long couple of days for our staff and our community,” Placer Sheriff Wayne Woo stated during a press conference that afternoon. Woo stated that although Abril was still wearing his waist chain, he was not wearing handcuffs and was instead just wearing the boxer shorts he had been provided.

He also said that Abril had been brought back to Roseville Sutter Medical Center to be cleared for jail, but that this time he was being watched over by six SWAT team members rather than only one on Sunday night. Matthew Bockmon, who represents Abril, was relieved to read in The Sacramento Bee that his client had been apprehended.

“I’m glad he’s safe,” Bockmon said. “And I hope nobody else is hurt.”

Abril ‘Didn’t Try And Run’

Bill Sanchez, a homeowner on Zion Court, told police that he saw a man in an orange jail jumpsuit near the creek behind his house and that he dialed 911 before directing cops through his garage to Abril. “I said, we got the guy, he’s got to be right here,” Sanchez said.

“He didn’t alert, didn’t try and run,” Sanchez said. “Standing there in his underwear.” Residents gathered to see law officers take Abril into arrest, shirtless and seemingly with knees heavily scraped by the underbrush he had been hiding in. Helicopters had flown overhead and armored cars had driven along the streets.

When 58-year-old Cheryl Katzen heard on a police scanner that he had been apprehended, she headed over to Zion Court to see what was going on. This is Katzen’s home on Bryce. She lives less than a mile from where Abril was captured, and she claims she heard police sirens and saw a SWAT squad drive by her home.

Aeron Heath, 52, was at her mother’s house in the 7500 block of Zion Court to see her off when police nabbed Abril from behind Sanchez’s residence. “They got him and pulled him up on the other side of the creek,” Heath said. “We heard them getting him and yelling. It was like yelling pain, like if you were hurting.”

Heath, 52, came all the way from Loomis to tell us that her mother’s house is close enough to the creek for Abril to break in any time. “The thought of some psychotic killer running around, that’s terrifying,” Heath said. “My mom has lived here for 40 years, and there’s sheds and vehicles parked where there’s lots of hiding spots.”

“I was here last night making sure everything was secure, and I returned this morning to double-check.”How massive those guns were! “We’ve never seen anything like that here before.”

More than 200 law enforcement agents had been searching for the man since April 6; his arrest ended the standoff in which he was suspected of killing a 72-year-old captive. Abril is also accused with wounding a California Highway Patrol officer and shooting the deceased man’s wife in the arm.

If you liked that article, you might also enjoy these related ones from the California Examiner:

Sheriff Investigating How Abril Escaped Hospital

Shortly after 3 a.m. on Sunday, Abril escaped from the hospital, which was located approximately 3 miles from where he was captured on Monday afternoon. Since he was admitted to the hospital on Thursday to treat his seizures, he was supposed to be under constant supervision from a deputy.

Woo has promised to look into how Abril’s April arrest was handled, when he was initially classed as requiring two deputies if transferred to a hospital, and how that changed, and what led to the escape.

“This should have never happened,” Woo said. The deputy gave up pursuit of Abril after he entered the hospital, where Abril had escaped by sprinting down a set of stairs. Officials from the Placer sheriff’s office stated they were looking into what happened, and they denied that the officer had fallen asleep.

Before Abril’s discovery on Monday, sheriff’s authorities said in a statement, “Our preliminary investigation reveals the deputy was not asleep during the incident.” It has been established that Abril “was able to defeat his restraints,” as sheriff’s officials put it, and an internal investigation into the circumstances surrounding his escape has commenced.

When asked about the idea that the guard had fallen asleep, Woo told The Sacramento Bee in an interview after Sunday’s media briefing that authorities lacked evidence to support such a theory. “There is no evidence of that,” Woo said. “There is an ongoing investigation and we’re really focusing on getting (Abril) back into custody.”

“I’m concerned with the fact that this occurred, obviously,” Woo added. “And we’ll be doing a full investigation when the time is right.” Sheriff’s Office spokesperson Angela Musallam responded to a Bee inquiry regarding the deputy, saying, “He is still assigned to the corrections division — an internal investigation has been initiated.”

The capture of Abril was described as “a team effort” by Rocklin police Lt. Scott Horillo on Monday, who noted that law enforcement officers from across the Sacramento region had converged on the Roseville and Rocklin neighborhoods to assist. Roseville, Lincoln, Folsom, Grass Valley, Truckee, Woodland, Davis, and West Sacramento police departments joined forces with the Placer County Sheriff’s Office.

El Dorado, Nevada, Yolo, Sacramento, and Amador County Sheriff’s Deputies, as well as the California Highway Patrol, the Department of Fish and Wildlife, the FBI, and other organizations, all participated in the operation.

These articles from the California Examiner may also interest you if you found the last one to be interesting:

Law Enforcement Searched Placer County Creeks For Abril

A large number of agencies spent all night searching the highly forested area along Secret Ravine between Roseville and Rocklin on Sunday night and into Monday am. At 12:50 a.m. on Monday, after police had been searching the area since Sunday afternoon without success, a law enforcement helicopter noticed movement at the end of China Garden Road in Rocklin, roughly a mile northeast of the hospital.

The rapid response, which included heat-sensing devices, drones, and dogs, looked to have located Abril for a while. Authorities dispatched search teams, including canines, and started making their way carefully into the densely forested area near Secret Ravine.

As searchers combed the underbrush and analyzed broken branches, footprints, and other possible clues for hours, one deputy radioed that the suspect “looked to be buried under the bushes under the trees from where they saw him go to ground first.”

Searchers later reported finding ice and food in the area, prompting officials to divert teams to a location along the stream where heat-sensing devices had detected human activity. After waiting for a while, they decided the heat signature they’d picked up was probably too small to be a person, but the teams still searched the nearby trails.

The locals told the police that there were deer in the vicinity, so it’s possible that they were the source of the heat signatures the search teams were picking up. “He was moving east when he disappeared,” one officer told colleagues over the radio. “I think he went to ground where everyone was looking.

“The only way to move was east through the brush.” Another hunter claimed to have been so close he could hear the creatures moving. “There was some heavy movement near a tree and it just stopped,” he said. “Then we heard some crackling noises.”

El Dorado County law enforcement deployed a drone to aid in the hunt for a missing person, which was complicated by the dense vegetation. One cop radioed, “It’s just hard to access.” Immense thickness; “it’s super thick.”

In an effort to avoid their target overhearing their radio communications, police officers occasionally resorted to whispering updates. Two hours after they first saw movement in the area, searchers allegedly gave up and started leaving about 3 a.m.

The searchers had narrowed the region down to around 3 miles northeast of where Abril had been seen on a surveillance camera on Rainier Court in Rocklin at 3:39 a.m. on Sunday.

Do you follow California news? Follow the California Examiner for breaking news.

If you liked that piece, you might like these others from the California Examiner in a similar vein:

Exit mobile version