Woman Held in Poisoning of Step-Granddad

A 41-year-old woman was jailed Wednesday on suspicion of poisoning her ailing step-grandfather on two occasions in what authorities are describing as an attempt to kill the Simi Valley man for financial gain.

Sindi Samantha Del Tour was being held on $250,000 bail Wednesday night on suspicion of attempted murder, poisoning and elder abuse.

Prosecutors have further alleged the actions were premeditated, which carries a maximum penalty of life in prison. She is scheduled to be arraigned this afternoon.

Del Tour, who works as a self-employed personal trainer, was arrested shortly before 8 a.m. Wednesday at her home in Oildale near Bakersfield, according to Simi Valley Police Sgt. Bob Gardner.

The arrest came a day after officers searched her house and found syringes, tranquilizers similar to Valium and financial records that allegedly show Del Tour was in debt, Gardner said.

“She stood to gain financially if he died,” Ventura County Deputy Dist. Atty. Audry Rohn said.

Authorities allege that on two occasions last December at the victim’s house and at Simi Valley Hospital, Del Tour gave Harley Hartung large doses of Benzodiazepine, a derivative of Valium.

Hartung, a 78-year-old widower and retired teacher, survived both incidents. Hartung has had health problems that require a live-in caretaker, but he has always been lucid and ambulatory, authorities said.

He had not been prescribed tranquilizers by his doctor.

“What was done was life-threatening. How close it actually came to being fatal really isn’t the issue. It’s whether or not it could have killed him,” Gardner said. “We’re alleging attempted murder.”

According to Gardner and Rohn, Del Tour started visiting the victim after her maternal grandmother, Hartung’s wife, died last year.

The first incident occurred on the night of Dec. 14, 1998, when Hartung became lethargic and unresponsive after spending time alone with Del Tour at his house, Gardner said.

Del Tour summoned the caretaker, who was in another area of the house, and the two put Hartung to bed, Gardner said. The next day, they took Hartung to Simi Valley Hospital after he awoke lethargic and unable to stand.

On Dec. 16, while Hartung was still in the hospital, authorities said, Del Tour visited his room and allegedly injected more of the same drug into his intravenous fluid tube.

After the injection, a hospital nurse walked into Hartung’s room and saw Del Tour standing next to the tube and a strange colored liquid in the tube’s injection port, Gardner said.

The nurse shut off the tube’s pump and then left to notify a doctor, the sergeant said. When she returned, the nurse found Del Tour still there and the tube’s pump turned back on, Gardner said.

The nurse turned off the pump a second time, removed the tube from Hartung’s arm and contacted police.

Prosecutor Rohn said the incident is the 15th elder abuse case to be received by the district attorney’s elder abuse unit since Jan. 1. Seven of those cases have been about financial fraud and eight have involved abuse or neglect. A total of 50 elder abuse cases were reviewed in 1998, she said.

Since the unit began in 1996, this is the first elder abuse case that includes a charge of poisoning, Rohn said.