Official Admits Lying About Death at Clinic : Courts: Abortion facility administrator, on trial for murder, testifies that she was ‘too scared’ to tell truth to police but denies giving fatal injection.

An abortion clinic administrator accused of murder in the death of one of her patients took the witness stand Monday and wept, admitting that she lied to police about how the woman died.

Alicia Hanna, who allegedly was caught by witnesses trying to stuff the victim’s body into the trunk of a car, looked pale and exhausted as she testified. She said she gave the woman two prescription drugs when she came to her clinic seeking an abortion but never actually performed the procedure.

Hanna also seemed to deflect blame when she testified that the woman, 27-year-old Angela Nieto Sanchez of Orange, appeared to be high on other drugs when she arrived at her Bristol Street clinic. She said the woman’s death might have been caused by an allergic reaction to one of the prescription drugs--Valium--that Hanna gave her to calm her nerves.

When the woman became violently ill, Hanna said she didn’t call 911 and later lied to Sanchez’s family and to police about the woman’s death.

“I was too scared,” Hanna said. “I thought I was going to get arrested for having Ms. Sanchez dead in my clinic, for practicing medicine without a license. I was scared about losing my children, the clinic, everything.”

Hanna, a mother of two, is on trial in Orange County Superior Court on a charge of murder, two counts of performing an illegal abortion and one count of attempting an illegal abortion.

Prosecutors believe that Hanna injected Sanchez with an unknown drug and refused to call 911 after the patient began foaming at the mouth and vomiting. Sanchez’s 12-year-old daughter, Maria, and 3-year-old son were waiting in the lobby of the clinic as their mother died, prosecutors contend, then were sent home with an uncle by Hanna after an assistant told them their mother had left without them.

Relatives told investigators that when they returned to the clinic to find Sanchez later that night, they discovered Hanna attempting to hoist the dead woman’s body into the trunk of Sanchez’s car. Prosecutors say Hanna was planning to get friends to dispose of the car in Tijuana.

When brought in for questioning, Hanna told police that Sanchez had been dumped unconscious at her clinic by an unknown man.

Under questioning Monday by Deputy Public Defender Steve Biskar, Hanna said over and over that she did not want Sanchez to die. She described how she desperately tried to save the woman from what she believed was an allergic reaction to the Valium by giving her an injection of a second drug, Narcan, which is commonly used to counteract drug overdoses. When that failed, she gave her mouth-to-mouth resuscitation despite the woman’s vomiting.

“I kept doing it because I didn’t want her to die,” Hanna said.

But throughout her testimony, Hanna also painted an unflattering portrait of Sanchez. Besides appearing to be high, she said, the woman brought her two children to the clinic even though Hanna had told her to leave them at home.

Hanna also said Sanchez’s daughter, Maria, told her that her mother had almost gotten the family into a car accident on the way to the clinic.

Hanna said that after Sanchez learned via a test Hanna gave her that she was pregnant, she insisted she wanted an abortion. She said Sanchez became upset when Hanna, who was not licensed to perform abortions, told her to go to another clinic or return in a few days when a doctor would be available.

Hanna said Sanchez told her she was having trouble with her boyfriend and couldn’t take off work to return for a later abortion. Although Hanna said she had misgivings, she said Sanchez insisted that she be given an injection of Methergine that could cause her to have a spontaneous abortion.

Methergine is used in Mexico and other countries to induce uterine bleeding, contractions and spontaneous abortions, Biskar said.

“I felt sorry for her and her situation,” Hanna said. “She had four children and was having problems with her boyfriend.”

But Hanna insisted that she never actually gave Sanchez the Methergine injection because Sanchez started having trouble breathing after she swallowed the Valium.

Although Hanna admitted to having severe financial difficulties, she denied that she took Sanchez as a patient for the $270 Sanchez paid her. Hanna said she dispensed Methergine to women like Sanchez because they felt more comfortable with her than with male doctors and because her clinic was a safe environment.

Hanna said she and an assistant were in the process of taking Sanchez’s body to a hospital when Sanchez’s relatives found them carrying the woman to her car.