Clinic Fatality Revives Probe of Two Others

Santa Ana police said Saturday that the death of a toddler treated in an unlicensed clinic in Tustin has prompted them to renew their own investigation into the clinic’s owners and a pair of earlier deaths.

Witnesses told police the King family, owners of the Tustin toy store where the toddler allegedly received an injection, provided illegal prescription drugs to the Santa Ana clinic where a 13-month-old boy--who later died--was injected five times by an unlicensed physician. The Kings were never charged in the case.

The Kings were cleared in a second case, the death of a 15-year-old boy, after a coroner could not determine whether the drugs they supplied caused his death.

“In light of the Tustin death and the King connection, we’ll certainly go and look at any other activities that the King family may be involved with,” said Santa Ana Police Capt. Dan McCoy. “They have a history of involvement in the black-market prescription drug trade.”

The parents of 18-month-old Selene Segura Rios took her to Los Hermanos Gift Shop in Tustin two weeks ago, where she was allegedly injected with what her parents were told was penicillin.

Oscar Eduardo King of Chula Vista and Santa Ana is the registered owner of the shop but he told The Times last week that he turned the business over to his sister, Laura Escalante, last year.

Tustin police are awaiting results of toxicological tests to determine if the injection and actions of store employees contributed to the infant’s death, Lt. Mike Shanahan said Saturday.

“Certainly the Kings’ background and their criminal history and immediate association is obviously a significant part of our investigation,” Shanahan said.

Santa Ana police said the King family has a history of selling illegal pharmaceuticals.

“When the death in Tustin occurred, our investigators who had previously worked on the King cases met with Tustin police and gave them all the information we had on the family,” McCoy said.

In one of the cases, police said witnesses told them the King family may have supplied prescription drugs used at Consultorio Medico in Santa Ana, where 13-month-old Christopher Martinez received his fifth injection by an unlicensed physician.

Investigators had no evidence that the drugs given the toddler came from the Kings, nor that they directly caused his death, McCoy said. The Martinez toddler, severely dehydrated, died after the unlicensed doctor advised the family not to allow him food or drink, he said.

McCoy added that “if there is any evidence that would link the Kings or anyone else to the supplying of illegal medication and the deaths [of Rios and Martinez], we will certainly go and try and substantiate that with physical evidence.”

A second death investigated by Santa Ana police occurred in December 1997 after the family of a 15-year-old boy bought drugs at a store owned by the Kings. But “there is no way to link any drugs to his death,” McCoy said.

Oscar King and his father, Manuel Javier King, were arrested in October 1992 in connection with the sale of an illegal pregnancy prevention drug to women at the Orange Swap Meet. The injectable drug, Perlotal, is illegal in the United States and has not been proved to stop pregnancies, state investigators said.

The drugs sold by the elder King, of Santa Ana, and his son contained markings indicating the medicine was from Mexico, police said, and both men were convicted in the case.

Two years earlier, the elder King was arrested in a Santa Ana garage while he and another man, Hector Raul Becerra, administered a shot to a 6-month-old child, police said. Becerra identified himself as a physician in Mexico. Police seized an assortment of medical equipment, including syringes and intravenous bottles, and the men were convicted, they said.

In addition, Rosa King, another sister of Oscar King, was convicted last year of selling prescription drugs out of her Santa Ana gift shop after investigators bought illegal birth-control pills and other medicine there.

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Times staff writer H.G. Reza contributed to this story.