Social Worker Slain in Clinic; Transient Held

A psychiatric social worker was stabbed to death Tuesday morning in a Los Angeles County mental health clinic in Santa Monica by a transient who was one of her patients, authorities said.

The victim, Robbyn Panitch, 36, of Santa Monica, died at Santa Monica Hospital Medical Center about an hour after the attack, which police said occurred shortly before 10 a.m.

Panitch, her black blouse and gray-checkered slacks splattered with blood, had been stabbed 31 times, hospital spokesman Ted Braun said. The weapon, Braun said, was a knife with a 3-inch folding blade.

‘Tremendously Violent’

“It was a tremendously violent attack,” said Santa Monica Police Sgt. John Miehle.

The attack came at a time when several county mental health facilities are to be closed and hundreds of social workers are to be laid off as a result of $18 million in budget cuts.

While the precise motive for the assault remained unclear late Tuesday, Panitch’s family, as well as colleagues and union officials, said the pending cutbacks had lent a heightened sense of danger to those who work with the system’s troubled patients. Some county officials said the attack, although tragic, could not be linked directly to the system’s diminished resources.

An experienced professional who had worked with the homeless, Panitch recently had expressed fear because “the caseload was getting bigger and bigger and people were getting crazier,” said her brother, Mark Panitch, a Yakima, Wash., attorney.

Booked by Santa Monica police on suspicion of homicide was David Scott Smith, 26, who police said was a transient who dwelt among Santa Monica street people. He was interviewed throughout Tuesday afternoon by detectives, and later placed in custody in the Santa Monica City Jail.

“As far as we know, there was no provocation (for the attack) whatsoever,” said Santa Monica Police Lt. Richard Johncola.

Santa Monica Police Sgt. Robert Oliver said the suspect had been in and around Santa Monica for several months and had been cited for several misdemeanor violations that ranged from jaywalking to drinking alcohol on public streets.

Panitch apparently was on the telephone to a colleague and her fiance while the assailant was in her office.

The attack occurred after the victim had spoken to Edith Pollach, a union official who represents the county’s psychiatric social workers. Pollach said that Panitch had to cut the call short, declaring that “she had a client in her office who was very upset.”

At that time, according to Santa Monica Police Detective Shane Talbot, the victim took a call from her fiance, Tom Flaherty, who was in Ventura.

“She was talking to him at the time of the attack,” Talbot said.

Police investigators said employees heard her scream and went to her assistance.

Smith scared away the first two women to arrive, they said, but two men were able to overpower him, take away his knife and hold him until police arrived at the two-story, pale brick facility at 1525 Euclid St.

Police responded to two calls, one a 911 emergency call at 9:53 a.m., the other a call on a direct emergency line from the center to the main police station in the Santa Monica Civic Center.

Details about what transpired inside Panitch’s office were unavailable. The center was locked shortly after the attack.

Santa Monica Fire Department paramedics rushed Panitch to the Medical Center, where she died at 10:58 a.m.

Mark Panitch said his sister told him Saturday that she had become increasingly frightened about working at the Santa Monica facility because “security was so bad.”

“She was scared,” he said, adding that she had spoken of leaving her job. “She was talking seriously about starting a private practice.”

There were no guards at the entrance of the clinic and the assailant freely walked into the facility and then into Panitch’s first-floor office, about 50 feet to the right of the entrance, and attacked her, officials said.

County Mental Health Director Roberto Quiroz said that some mental health facilities--those “in high-risk areas”--have guards, but not the Santa Monica complex.

The county is preparing to shut down eight mental health outpatient clinics and curtail services at five other psychiatric centers next week after getting the approval last month from a state Court of Appeal.

Attorneys representing indigent mentally ill patients had managed to delay the planned cuts for more than eight months, but Quiroz had sent layoff notices to 236 employees. The cutback, officials said, would affect about 20,000 patients who rely on the county for mental health services.

Martha Quintana, who represents Local 660 of the Service Employees International Union, to which 900 of the county’s 1,500 mental health workers belong, said she would go before the county Board of Supervisors next Tuesday and ask it to reconsider program funding cuts.

‘I’m outraged by it,” she said of the attack.

Quintana said that when patients must be told that counseling time has to be restricted--or, worse, eliminated--it “has an unsettling effect” and can lead to irrational behavior.

“There’ll be 20,000 outpatients without a place to go at the end of this month in addition to 23,000 homeless mentally ill people on the streets,” she said.

The Santa Monica health center is located on a quiet, tree-lined street near apartment houses and next to an auto repair yard.

Ralph Mitchell, acting chief of the facility, told reporters that the assailant had been to the clinic before. He would not elaborate.

He said he could recall no other instances in which staff members had been physically threatened by patients.

“It’s a terrible loss,” he said of the slaying.

He said security at the clinic “has been an ongoing issue” and that he had discussed the problem with county mental health officials.

“You can’t predict the behavior of, really, any of our clients,” he said. “Usually, they don’t tend to be more dangerous than anyone else, but you never know.”

As Mitchell spoke, a man whose uniform shoulder patch identified him as a member of the “Los Angeles County Safety Police” slipped behind the acting chief and stationed himself at the clinic door.

Word of the tragedy spread quietly through the neighborhood, where residents have coexisted peacefully with the 61-year-old clinic. A manila folder was taped to one of the wrought-iron gates in front of the facility, informing clients only that the “mental health clinic is closed today.”

The victim’s mother, Gloria Panitch of Rancho Palos Verdes, said her daughter had been a social worker for 3 1/2 years and was engaged to be married soon to a medical administrator.

“This was her first job (as a county social worker) after graduation,” she said.

“She was totally committed” to her work, her mother said. Still, she said, Panitch often expressed concern about the lack of any guards at the Santa Monica office at a time when “she was seeing a lot of paranoids and (schizophrenics).”

“She told me that she was alone in this office where anybody could walk in,” her mother said.

Dr. Randall Firling, psychiatrist for the county Homeless Outreach Program, said he worked with Panitch in the South Bay. Panitch, he said, had worked with the homeless for about 18 months in the South Bay, Inglewood, Lawndale, Carson and Gardena, through the county’s Homeless Outreach Program.

Noting that some of these clinics are located in high-risk neighborhoods as contrasted to the relatively safer Santa Monica environment, he declared: “It’s almost like someone who makes it through the war and then gets killed at home.”

Less was known about Smith. Detectives said he was born in Encino and raised on the Westside of Los Angeles. They were interviewing his mother late Tuesday night.

Smith was expected to be arraigned today or Thursday in Santa Monica Municipal Court.

Violence is no stranger to mental health professionals. Earlier this month, in a heavily publicized case, a former mental patient pleaded not guilty to charges that he raped and killed a pregnant doctor at New York’s Bellevue Hospital. In 1985, a Canoga Park man was convicted of setting a fire that seriously injured a West Los Angeles psychiatric counselor who had discontinued his treatment. The counselor’s husband was killed in the blaze.

Contributing to this story were Times staff writers Bob Baker, Stephen Braun, Gregory Gonzalez, Penelope McMillan, Patt Morrison and Hector Tobar.