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2 Boys Escape From San Francisco Juvenile Hall

SAN FRANCISCO (KCBS) – San Francisco police were searching for two boys who escaped from the juvenile hall facility in San Francisco's Forest Hill neighborhood on Tuesday night.

It took the 12 and 16 year old inmates less than 15 minutes to escape the Youth Guidance Center at 375 Woodside Ave., said William Siffermann, San Francisco's chief juvenile probation officer.

The facility near Laguna Honda Hospital houses low-risk youth.

"They escaped from their room through a one foot square window, after smashing it with a metal room fixture pried from the wall," Siffermann said. "They squeezed through that opening into the outdoor fenced area."

The teens than scaled a 20-foot tall barbed wire fence to get out into the steep wooded terrain that surrounds the Guidance Center.

Two Teen Inmates Escape From San Francisco Juvenile Hall

Siffermann said there are visual room checks four times an hour and at 9:40 p.m. on Tuesday night, officers checked and the two teens were gone.

Authorities said they were wearing standard issue khaki pants, sweatshirts and slippers not suitable for climbing around the hillside, so there is a concern for not only those in the neighborhood, but also for the two teens themselves.

Siffermann said the 16-year-old boy was in custody for a probation violation and the 12-year-old was there for a property-related offense.

The parents of the inmates have been contacted and were cooperating with the investigation.

(Copyright 2013 by CBS San Francisco. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.)

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