Police Mishandled Poisoning, Family Says : Law enforcement: Officers treated victims of PCP-tainted milk as drug users, according to lawyer.

Members of a Pasadena family poisoned last week by PCP in a can of sweetened condensed milk charged Thursday that police treated them as drug suspects and unnecessarily took their children away.

Meanwhile, sheriff’s lab tests were released showing no traces of the drug in 13 other milk cans with the same code that were removed Wednesday from the store where the family bought the milk, said Pasadena City Hall spokeswoman Laurie Cottrell.

Yolanda Aldaz, 29, who was poisoned, along with her 57-year-old mother and her children, said police harassed the family, interfered with their medical care and unnecessarily removed the children from the home.

“The Police Department took an accusatory position instead of an investigatory position,” said attorney Carlos Fournier, who represents the family.

Aldaz said her mother, Maria Conseulo Aldaz, was poisoned after she made rice pudding last week with a can of La Lechera brand milk. Aldaz said her mother appeared to be suffering from a stroke after sampling the milk and was taken to a hospital March 6.

A day later, Aldaz inadvertently poisoned herself and her two children, 3-year-old Danny Cardoza and 7-month-old Vanessa Cardoza, after she served them the same rice pudding.

But Pasadena police refused to believe the poisoning was accidental, Aldaz said. They searched her house for drugs and kept her children from her, keeping Danny in the hospital and placing Vanessa in a foster home in Pomona, she said.

The children were returned to Aldaz on Thursday.

But Pasadena police say that they acted appropriately. Frank Jameson, a supervisor in the department’s youth services division, said children are routinely removed from homes when it appears that they may be in danger.

Jameson said Pasadena police receive at least eight cases a year of children who are poisoned with PCP, a hallucinogen commonly known as angel dust. In those cases, adult drug users cook the drug in the kitchen then use the contaminated utensils to prepare food, he said.

“Given what I know about this case, it was handled very appropriately,” Jameson said. “It was consistent with our experience and with the experience of other police departments.”

Emery Bontrager, executive assistant with the county Department of Children’s Services, agreed. “If the police suspect negligence or physical abuse or the child’s health is in danger, then police have the power to take the child into protective custody,” he said. Bontrager said the police turned the child over to the county agency for placement in a foster home.

Pasadena police initially assumed the Aldaz poisonings were like the other PCP poisonings, Jameson said. But Jameson said he shifted the focus of the investigation to product tampering Tuesday, after background checks showed that the family did not fit the profile of drug users.

Lab tests conducted by the Sheriff’s Department found PCP in a 14-ounce can of La Lechera milk used for the Aldaz rice pudding. The milk was bought Feb. 27 at Louis Foods, 451 S. Sierra Madre Blvd. It bore the code V0277E on top.

Ten other cans were sold at the store within the same time period. One has since been turned in but has yet to be tested, Cottrell said.

Nestles USA Inc., which markets the product, has recalled all La Lechera milk cans nationwide. About 2,400 cans bear lot number V0277E, Cottrell said.

Jameson said the tampering appears to have been done before the milk was sold because the can bore no physical evidence of tampering. The federal Food and Drug Administration has since begun an investigation, he said.