Police Say Illness Killed Girl, Not Injection

An 18-month-old girl who received a penicillin injection in the back-room clinic of a Tustin gift shop died from severe dehydration and not from the shot, police said Thursday.

An autopsy performed by the Orange County coroner determined that Selene Segura Rios died from “acute dehydration caused by chronic enterocolitis,” said Tustin Police Lt. Mike Shanahan. Enterocolitis is a disease that destroys sections of a baby’s intestines.

The findings mean that manslaughter charges will not be sought in the case. Tustin police had arrested Monica Bernabe, 23, the store cashier who reportedly had administered the injection. Bernabe, who has maintained her innocence, was jailed in connection with the alleged possession of illegal prescription drugs but released three days later.

Police also have been investigating Laura Escalante, who owned the store where the clinic was located, Shanahan said. Escalante prepared the penicillin injection and is believed to be in Mexico, he said. She disappeared the day police delivered a search warrant on Los Hermanos Gift Shop. Investigators were never able to talk to her.

Officials at the coroner’s office refused to release autopsy information, but Shanahan said a county pathologist told him the enterocolitis resulted “from a bacterial infection of the inner lining of the colon.”

“I don’t know what caused the bacterial infection, but at the point that the parents sought medical help, it may have already been too late,” he said. “The child had been sick for some time. . . . They had sought out treatment with over-the-counter drugs before taking her to the clinic.”

The child’s parents, Alberto Ramirez Segura and Maria Lucia Rios of Anaheim, have been blaming themselves for taking their daughter to an unlicensed clinic, Shanahan said. It “was little relief for them to know the injection didn’t have anything to do with the baby’s death,” he said.

Police said Segura and Rios, both 27, believed Selene had the flu. She was vomiting and suffered from diarrhea, and the “symptoms became increasingly worse,” Shanahan said.

“She died two hours after receiving the injection,” Shanahan said. “It may have been too late even if they had taken her to a hospital rather than the [unlicensed] clinic.”

The family had a doctor, but the couple decided to go to the clinic because it was after hours and they could not afford to go to a hospital, Segura had said. They drove to Tustin, where friends had told them they could find a “doctor” at the shop on McFadden Avenue. When the baby failed to respond to the injection, Segura said, he drove her to Anaheim Memorial Hospital.

Shanahan said investigators have finished their probe of the clinic and forwarded a report to the district attorney’s office.

“Manslaughter is no longer an option. But you still have to look at the fact that this was a clandestine, illegal operation,” he said.

Selene’s death was the second in 10 months that focused attention on underground clinics in Orange County catering to Latino immigrants. Christoper Martinez, who was 13 months old, died in April 1998 after receiving treatment at an underground clinic in Santa Ana.

The boy received multiple injections for flu-like conditions at Consultorio Medico Santa Ana. The boy’s parents were told not to give him food or liquids, and the child died from complications resulting from dehydration.

The man who administered the injections, who was not a licensed physician, fled the country.