No Charges Filed in Death of Woman at Unlicensed Clinic

The Orange County district attorney’s office declined Friday to file charges against the director and an employee of an unlicensed Santa Ana women’s clinic who were arrested in the death of a 27-year-old pregnant patient.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Richard M. King said the office could not charge Alicia Ruiz Hanna, 31, of Santa Ana or Isasema Araceli Mendoza, 20, of Orange because the coroner’s office has yet to determine an official cause of death for Angela Nieto Sanchez.

But King said late Friday that the “investigation is continuing. . . . We anticipate that the cause of death will be determined, and once that has happened we will take a look at this case for what, if any, charges should be filed.”

Sanchez, a housecleaner from Orange with four children, was pronounced dead at a local hospital Tuesday afternoon, several hours after she visited Hanna’s business, Clinica Femenina de la Comunidad in Santa Ana.

Hanna and Mendoza were still being held at the Orange County Jail late Friday in lieu of $250,000 bail. Authorities said both women must be released by late Monday if charges are not filed.

Meanwhile, Hanna’s women’s clinic, as well as the Family Health and Weight Control Center she operated in the same suite of medical offices in the 1300 block of South Bristol Street, remained shut Friday. Police closed the businesses after Sanchez’s death.

State medical authorities said there is no record of a license being issued to Clinica Femenina de la Comunidad in Santa Ana and there is no record that Hanna, who police say claimed to be a registered nurse, is licensed in California.

Catherine Puri, executive officer of the state Board of Registered Nursing, said that practicing without a license is a misdemeanor and that her office would be asking the district attorney’s office to investigate the matter.

A teary-eyed Maria Sanchez, the dead woman’s oldest child, said Friday that she and a 3-year-old brother accompanied their mother to the clinic Tuesday morning. Angela Sanchez disappeared with a clinic worker into a room in the medical center, and it was the last time her children saw her alive, the 12-year-old girl said.

Angela Sanchez had been pregnant about a month and was in good health when she went to the Bristol Street clinic, said Celia Sanchez, the dead woman’s 27-year-old sister. She said Angela had been to the clinic a year before, prior to the birth of her youngest son.

According to county records, Hanna bought a business license for Clinica Femenina de la Comunidad under her name on June 26, 1992. More than a year earlier, on Feb. 19, 1991, Hanna registered the Family Health and Weight Control Center at the same address, listing herself as the owner.

In 1988, Hanna filed a fictitious business application under the name of A & S Maintenance Co., a partnership that she indicated she owned with her husband, Sid F. Hanna, and another woman.

On Feb. 4, 1992, Hanna took out a fictitious business application for the same address for C.J. Professional Management Co.