Robert Taylor

Robert Virgil Taylor, 50, who was on medical parole from state prison to an unidentified East County skilled-nursing facility, escaped custody on October 1.

Taylor, who has convictions for burglary and assault, according to the warning issued by the Department of Corrections days after he disappeared.

Medical parole was created by the state legislature in January 2011 for physically incapacitated inmates. According to the California Department of Corrections website, 23 inmates are on medical parole throughout the state.

The Department of Corrections is unable to provide specific information about why Taylor was paroled because of federal patient privacy laws, department spokesman Luis Patino said.

In fact, they were unable to provide any information about Taylor — where he had been housed, what he was convicted for — during the first three days of calls from this reporter.

Eventually, Patino provided a sheet that indicates Taylor was first convicted of robbery and kidnapping in the 1980s, but by the end of his term he had gotten into some kind of brawl in prison that involved bringing in a weapon and intending to commit great bodily harm. Those convictions built a simple sentence up to life, the form seems to indicate.

Again, Patino was unable to explain it. The Department of Corrections was also unable to identify the facility in East County that Taylor ditched out of, leaving his wheelchair behind in the parking lot.

Taylor is described as a six-foot-tall African-American man with brown eyes and black hair. He weighs about 230 pounds.