The suspect in a Long Beach homicide who was mistakenly released from custody earlier this month was rearrested Monday, officials said.
Steven Manzo, 23, of Hawaiian Gardens, faces charges in the 2018 shooting death of a Salvador Corrales. Manzo was arrested a year ago and had been incarcerated since then, until he was somehow released March 9.
After three weeks of searching, authorities spotted Manzo in Buena Park Monday as he was getting into a car with several others inside. They followed the vehicle into Cypress, where they pulled it over and took Manzo into custody, according to the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department.
It remains unclear exactly how Manzo was able to be freed and who is to blame for his release, which spurred a manhunt that shut down the 101 Freeway in downtown L.A. during rush hour.
The Sheriff’s Department, which processes inmates, says deputies did not “erroneously” release Manzo because they received a so-called “order for release” from the court, indicating the case was dismissed.
The district attorney’s office, however, said it was prepared to proceed with Manzo’s preliminary hearing March 8 — but the defendant was not brought to court from county jail.
Because his two co-defendants refused to postpone the hearing until Manzo could be transported to court, “the prosecutor asked for the case to be dismissed and immediately refiled it with the same charges against the three defendants to allow for the postponement of the preliminary hearing,” said Ricardo Santiago, a public information officer for the DA’s office.
But the following day, the case’s prosecutor “became aware that the defendant had been released from custody and alerted law enforcement,” Santiago said.
Long Beach police said they could “confirm the error was not on our end.”
Following his arrest Monday Manzo was placed back in the Police Department’s custody, where he was being held on roughly $4 million bail, officials said.
The DA’s office had originally rescheduled Manzo’s arraignment for March 23, when he was still on the lam. A new date has yet to be announced.