Men Ordered to Trial in Detox Center Death

A judge Friday ordered two men to stand trial for the death of a patient who had been bound and force-fed alcohol at an unlicensed alcohol detox clinic.

Municipal Judge Jessica Silvers denied motions to drop charges against Dante Barrera and Jose Rodriguez after the preliminary hearing.

The decision came at the end of testimony of another patient who was at the North Hollywood storefront when Enrique Bravo died in May.

“All he wanted to do was go home. When they saw that he wanted to go, that’s when they hogtied him,” Ralph Garcia said. He said the night before Bravo died, he kept complaining about being thirsty, but instead of helping him, the men who ran the center gagged him.

Garcia said he, too, had been tied up and forced to drink alcohol for days, and he was afraid if he helped Bravo that things would be worse for him.

“I watched him die,” Garcia said, his hands covering his mouth as he spat out the words so quickly the court reporter had trouble understanding him.

Barrera and Rodriguez will stand trial for involuntary manslaughter and false imprisonment in Bravo’s death and for false imprisonment for tying up Garcia. Two other men who had been charged in the case, Alberto Saguache and Aramando Sakaquil, pleaded no contest to involuntary manslaughter charges last month and were sentenced to a year in jail.

The plea agreement was reached days after a coroner’s report revealed that Bravo died of chronic liver disease and had no alcohol in his system when he died.

However, in the preliminary hearing for Barrera and Rodriguez, which lasted several days, Los Angeles County Coroner Lakschmanan Sathyavagiswaran testified that he considers Bravo’s death a homicide. He said the unconventional methods used at Grupo Liberacion y Fortaleza may have resulted in asphyxia.

After media reports of Bravo’s death--and 10 other suspicious deaths linked to unlicensed alcohol rehabilitation clinics in the Southland--Los Angeles County supervisors called for a crackdown on the facilities. Eight clinics have been closed.

Late last month, three men accused of killing a patient at a similar unlicensed treatment center pleaded no contest to involuntary manslaughter charges and were each sentenced to two years in prison.