The man accused of assaulting a sex worker and holding her captive in a small cinderblock cell in his garage tried to bust out of the Oregon jail where he is being held, police said.
Negasi Zuberi has been behind bars in Jackson County since his arrest last month on charges of interstate kidnapping and transporting someone across state lines with the intent to engage in criminal sexual activity. He is now facing additional charges of second-degree attempted escape and first-degree disorderly conduct, according to a statement from the Jackson County Sheriff’s Office.
Zuberi’s alleged escape attempt was foiled by a maintenance worker, who reported “a suspicious noise” coming from inside the jail on Tuesday. When authorities arrived on the scene just before 1 p.m., they found Zuberi standing on top of his bunk bed near a chipped window, police said.
A subsequent search of his cell turned up an improvised tool that investigators suspect was used to damage the window.
“The Jail’s exterior windows are made of reinforced glass so Zuberi was only able to damage the interior layer of the window,” police noted.
He was then detained, sent through a full-body scanner and put in a different cell without windows.
Zuberi was arrested on July 16 in a Walmart parking lot in Reno, Nev. The day before, he traveled approximately 450 miles from his Oregon home to Seattle, where he picked up a sex worker and then lied to her about being an undercover police officer, according to the FBI. The woman later told investigators that he threatened her with a Taser as he cuffed her hands and legs in the backseat of his car, and then made the long drive back to his rental home in Klamath Falls.
There, he forced the woman into a small soundproof cell inside his garage, according to authorities. She remained trapped for hours before she managed to bust the door down and escape. She has also claimed Zuberi sexually assaulted her while she was restrained.
Zuberi, who has multiple aliases and has lived in 12 states over the last decade, is being investigated in connection to at least four other sexual assaults in four states, NBC News reported. He has not yet been charged in connection with any of those cases.