Los Alamitos : Fumigator Sentenced in Death of Resident

Louis E. Tilley of Los Alamitos, owner of Sunset Fumigation of Long Beach, has been sentenced to serve 60 days in jail or 40 days picking up freeway trash in a criminal case stemming from the death of a mentally disabled man. The man was overcome by the poison gas used to kill termites in his Los Angeles home.

The firm was also hit with $5,100 in fines and penalties on Tuesday by Los Angeles Municipal Court Commissioner Richard Sandoval.

Tilley had pleaded no contest to a violation of the state Business and Professions Code, which specifies that it is a crime to fail to use effective secondary locks on a house being fumigated.

The complaint was filed in December after the death of Donald Akers, 34, a Vietnam War veteran with a service-related mental disability, according to Donald Kass, a Los Angeles County deputy city attorney.

Sunset workers found Akers inside his home on Feb. 21, 1988, after they arrived to ventilate the house, which had been covered with a tent and fumigated. An autopsy showed that Akers had died of acute sulfuryl fluoride intoxication. At the time of the fumigation, according to Kass, Akers and his parents were to stay at a nearby hotel, but Akers had apparently returned to the house.