[Update at end of post] Orange County Sheriff's Department (OCSD) deputies this morning are hunting a career criminal who escaped Friday from the James A. Musick Jail in Irvine, according to an OCSD special bulletin by Lieutenant Jeff Hallock.
Officials discovered Max Edward Fernandez missing during a 4 p.m. security check at the facility and are asking citizens to report any related information, especially the inmate's whereabouts, by calling OCSD Investigator D. McKenzie at 714-647-7000 or calling anonymously to OC Crime Stoppers at 885-847-6227.
]
The 5-foot-8 and 170-pound Fernandez has brown hair, brown eyes and several tattoos, including a tribal band on his upper right arm, skull on his upper right back and USMC with a hammer shark head on his left tricep.
Hallock reports the criminal was last seen wearing a gray t-shirt and red shorts under gray sweat pants.
Officials also believe the inmate may have injured himself during the escape.
Fernandez was in custody for possession of stolen property and a narcotics violations.
He'd previously compiled a rap sheet that includes thefts, burglaries, narcotics violations, auto theft and resisting arrest, according to Hallock's press statement.
UPDATE, 3:30 p.m., Sept. 21: Authorities found an unarmed Fernandez hiding in an Oceanside Wendy's restaurant; the inmate is now being housed inside the main Orange County Jail in Santa Ana.
Follow OC Weekly on Twitter @ocweekly or on Facebook!
Email: rs**********@******ly.com. Twitter: @RScottMoxley.
CNN-featured investigative reporter R. Scott Moxley has won Journalist of the Year honors at the Los Angeles Press Club; been named Distinguished Journalist of the Year by the LA Society of Professional Journalists; obtained one of the last exclusive prison interviews with Charles Manson disciple Susan Atkins; won inclusion in Jeffrey Toobin’s The Best American Crime Reporting for his coverage of a white supremacist’s senseless murder of a beloved Vietnamese refugee; launched multi-year probes that resulted in the FBI arrests and convictions of the top three ranking members of the Orange County Sheriff’s Department; and gained praise from New York Times Magazine writers for his “herculean job” exposing entrenched Southern California law enforcement corruption.