A late-night tip helped police recapture two teenagers mistakenly released from jail. The two are accused of a violent string of armed robberies.
The teens were freed from the Salt Lake County Jail due to a technicality the day before prosecutors filed multiple aggravated robbery charges against them.Their release Tuesday surprised everyone, including Youth Corrections, which had an arrest warrant for one of the teens.
Bill Nelsen, director of Youth Corrections' region II, said normally when a person posts bail at the adult jail but has a Youth Corrections warrant, his office is notified and the teen is booked into the Salt Lake Juvenile Detention Center on the warrant.
That's what should have happened to Mifi Mahe, 17, who was charged with nine counts of aggravated robbery, a first-degree felony, Wednesday in 3rd Circuit Court.
Penisimani "Ben" Po'uha, 18, was charged the same day with 15 counts of aggravated robbery, a first-degree felony, and two counts of aggravated sexual assault, a first-degree felony.
Instead both were freed because no charges had been filed against them and jail workers failed to notice the warrant for Mahe's arrest.
Po'uha and Mahe were arrested Friday March 8, booked into jail that night and arraigned by telephone on Sunday. Sheriff's spokesman Sgt. Rod Norton said because of crowded conditions at the jail, judges have been giving prosecutors three working days to file charges.
But the standing order from presiding Judge Robin Reese gives prosecutors 72 hours from the prisoner's arraignment to file charges. Apparently the judge who arraigned the pair followed the standing order and ordered the teens to be released Tuesday if charges weren't filed.
Norton said prosecutors, detectives and jail officers all work under the assumption that they have three working days before a prisoner is released and thus the confusion.
"When the judge set the release date earlier, that was never communicated back to prosecutors or us," Norton said, calling the case "relatively enormous."
He said it was the magnitude of the case that led to prosecutors using the full three working days before filing.
As for the release of Mahe despite a Youth Corrections warrant demanding his arrest, Norton said he doesn't know how that happened.
"We're looking into that," Norton said, "If that is the case, that shouldn't have happened."
Mahe and Po'uha were arrested at a West Valley home about 12:30 a.m. Thursday. Youth Corrections officer Corbett Ford got a call about an hour earlier from a confidential informant who claimed to know where the two teens had been hiding since their release from jail.
Ford called the Salt Lake County Sheriff's gang unit and they made the arrests. Both are now being held in the Salt Lake County Jail in lieu of $250,000 bail.
A third teen, Mark Hasselblad, 16, was charged with three counts of aggravated robbery, a first-degree felony. Ford said Hasselblad has been in the Detention Center since last week and was scheduled to be transported to the Salt Lake County Jail.
Prosecutors are asking the juveniles be tried in the adult system because both have spent time in a secure juvenile facility.
The three are accused of a string of robberies that began March 3 when TJ's Magazines in Murray was robbed. Two customers and an employee of the store at 4915 S. State told police a man with a semiautomatic handgun demanded money from their wallets as well as the cash register.
The pattern continued four hours later when the Sconecutter, 2040 S. State, was robbed.
Two days later, Chuck-A-Rama, 744 E. 400 South, and Redwood Nursery, 850 S. Redwood Road, were robbed within 40 minutes of each other. Again, no one was injured, but the men took money, brandished weapons and forced an employee to lie on the floor.
On March 8, four stores were hit within about 45 minutes.
Witnesses told police they saw a man that matched one of the suspect's description flee Little Caesar's Pizza, 5654 Holladay Blvd., and jump into a brown Chevrolet station wagon driven by another man.
Twenty minutes later, two women were forced to perform sex acts on Po'uha during a robbery at Pat's Dancewear, 2280 E. 3300 South, court documents state. A shotgun was also fired into a wall during the holdup.
The trio is then accused of robbing Electric Beach tanning salon, 2274 S. 1300 East, and Pizza Hut, 753 E. 2100 South.
The men also face firearm enhancement penalties on each aggravated robbery charge for allegedly using a firearm in the commission of a felony.