A convicted teen murderer on furlough cut off his ankle monitor and vanished for two days in Orange County.

Jose Angel Aguilar was a juvenile when he murdered someone in Anaheim back in 2021. Specific details about the case are not public. Since then, he has been serving time at an Orange County Probation Department juvenile facility.

Aguilar has been caught after his brief escape, but the incident has raised troubling questions.

The probation department says they were made aware that the juvenile court granted Aguilar access to a weekly academic furlough in February. On March 6, they went to the courts and asked them to revoke the furlough access due to concerns about recent potential violations.

The furloughs were allowed to continue, and four days later — on Tuesday, March 10 — he cut off his GPS monitor.

Aguilar — now 22 years old — was taking weekly classes at Santiago Canyon College in the city of Orange when he reportedly cut off the GPS monitor and absconded, triggering a manhunt involving probation and law enforcement agencies.

Anaheim police investigated Aguilar’s murder case back in 2021, and when they found out he was missing, they jumped in to help find him. The Anaheim SWAT team tracked Aguilar down to a Buena Park motel room on Thursday night.

For Orange County Supervisor Don Wagner, this case is raising a lot of red flags and questions about academic furloughs.

“How could this happen? How can we let these folks out? We spend a lot of money at the county, and I know at the state prison system, to run education programs. I don’t know why those weren’t good enough,” Wagner said. “This is a state law that allows this. I don’t know whether the judge’s hands were tied and he had to do it or what, but it’s a bad program. It’s a bad idea, and there’s no good reason why these folks who are dangerous to the community should be roaming free.”

Wagner says he is working with the District Attorney’s Office to potentially bring legislation forward suggesting a change to the furloughs.

“We got lucky this time. And my question would be, does this program need to continue? Why should it continue? Why should we continue putting folks at risk?” Wagner said. “This murderer does not deserve to benefit from this program.”

“We take violations of GPS very seriously,” said Daniel Hernandez, the Chief Probation Officer for the Orange County Probation Department.

The courts rescinded a previous order allowing Hernandez to discuss details about Aguilar’s case, but he says that in the past three years, the scope of county probation departments has expanded, especially when it comes to juvenile offenders, requiring them to house serious and violent juvenile offenders up to the age of 25.

Decisions about those offenders, however, are not made exclusively by them.

“When suggestions are being made bout how to handle a case in court, the probation department is present. We do have officers in the courtroom that are representing our objective and reasonable decisions and determinations… and so we provide the court with those recommendations as to what might possibly be a good course of action, and of course, the probation department’s recommended course of actions,” Hernandez said, noting that it is up to the court to make the final decision.

Eyewitness News reached out to Orange County Courts, asking how Aguilar was approved for the program and why they didn’t follow Probation’s recommendation to revoke his furloughs. A spokesperson said they are ethically prohibited from discussing the case.

Santiago Canyon College says it is reviewing coordination and notification procedures related to academic furloughs.