Local News in Brief : AIDS Patient, Vowing to Infect Others, Flees
Los Angeles police were looking Thursday night for an AIDS patient who they said walked out of the Veterans Administration hospital in Sepulveda and threatened to pass the deadly virus to “anyone who comes in contact with him.”
The man, Barry Joseph Debow, 28, whose last known address was in Oxnard, left the hospital sometime Wednesday afternoon and drove off in a gray 1982 Firebird, a day before he was scheduled for surgery for “an AIDS-related sickness,” Detective Andre Dawson said.
Debow threatened to kill his previous employers at Rancho Encino Hospital, to inject his own blood into “anyone who comes in contact with him” and to “bite and scratch” anyone who tries to subdue him, Dawson said.
Police did not disclose how Debow’s alleged threats were made or when he had been employed at Rancho Encino Hospital. A hospital spokeswoman declined comment Thursday night.
Officials at the VA hospital “took his threats pretty seriously, so apparently he has the capability of doing what he is threatening to do,” Dawson said. But there is no evidence that Debow has samples of his blood with him, the detective said.
Debow, who apparently is despondent about having AIDS, discussed suicide with a doctor at the VA hospital before he left, Dawson said.
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