Police Will Ask Mexico to Prosecute Woman Over Lethal Injection

Police said Tuesday that they believe a Reseda woman suspected of killing a patient by giving him an injection while illegally practicing medicine in her house has fled to Mexico, and that they will ask the Mexican government to prosecute her.

“I don’t imagine that she’s going to come back. So, I guess we will” contact the Mexican authorities, said Los Angeles Police Detective Joel Price. “The Mexican government doesn’t like to give us people back.”

Price said despite concerns that local and state authorities in Mexico sometimes drag their feet in criminal cases, the Los Angeles Police Department will seek the involvement of Mexico’s federal police and prosecutors. They are seeking Refugio Sandoval, 60, on suspicion of manslaughter charges.

“If you are dealing with the (Mexican) state or local government, you are at their whim,” said Price, a West Valley Division homicide detective who is heading the dragnet for Sandoval. “But the federal government actively prosecutes these cases. They will go get people and bring them to justice.”

Sandoval fled from her Hesperia Avenue home Sunday after Jesus Nicolas Anchondo, 22, went into convulsions after she gave him an injection for flu-like symptoms. He was pronounced dead at noon--an hour after being taken by paramedics to Northridge Hospital Medical Center.

An autopsy will be performed to determine the exact cause of death, but a spokesman for the Los Angeles County coroner’s office said it could be weeks before the results are released.

Police have said Sandoval had a house full of medications and was practicing medicine without a license. In her home, they found chairs lined up as if they were in a waiting room, and hundreds of different vials, bottles and boxes of medicines and medications, authorities said.

Sandoval appeared to have gotten at least some of her medications in Tijuana, and she was providing significant medical care to a steady clientele through word of mouth, police said. Unlicensed medical practitioners known as curanderas , or healers, cater to low-income clients in many immigrant communities, authorities said.

Price said police will probably transcribe all their reports into Spanish and give them to Mexican prosecutors, who would then decide whether to file criminal charges, issue a warrant and arrest Sandoval. He said he didn’t know exactly where she was, but that several anonymous callers had said she had fled to Mexico.

Anchondo had gone with his mother and common-law wife to see Sandoval after he began complaining of a fever, sore throat and other flu-like symptoms. His mother told police that she had been seeing Sandoval for health problems for as long as five years.

In California, practicing medicine without a license is a misdemeanor, but the charge can be pursued as a felony if harm occurs, authorities said.