Family Probed in Drug Case, 2 Child Deaths

Federal authorities said Monday they are investigating whether members of a Southern California family were illegally importing and selling prescription drugs that police believe may be connected to the death last month of an 18-month-old.

A federal grand jury in San Diego has started probing allegations that members of the King family--with businesses and homes in Santa Ana, Tustin and Chula Vista--have smuggled Mexican pharmaceuticals from Tijuana, law enforcement sources said.

The grand jury investigation is the latest probe into the activities of Oscar E. King, his sister, Laura Escalante, and others after the deaths of two toddlers during the last year.

Santa Ana and Tustin police are investigating whether drugs provided by family members to a store-front clinic and a back-room medical shop played a role in the toddlers’ deaths. Both children died after unlicensed personnel gave them injections of medicine that had been smuggled across the border, police said.

Jud Bohrer, who heads the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s criminal investigations office in San Diego, said the King family is the subject of a federal probe conducted by his agency, the U.S. Customs Service and the U.S. attorney’s office. Bohrer declined to be more specific.

“Whether it goes beyond the King family and involves a number of other individuals, as it may well, I’m not able to say. It’s a pending case, and I’m not able to comment on it any further,” he said.

A federal prosecution carries the potential for felony charges, and longer sentences than a state case. Violations of the state Health and Safety Code are misdemeanors, said officials at the California Food and Drug Branch.

Last month, 18-month-old Selene Segura Rios of Anaheim died after receiving an injection at Los Hermanos Gift Shop, a

Tustin store police say is owned by King and operated by Escalante. Police are awaiting the results of toxicology tests to determine what was injected into the girl and whether it was responsible for her death.

Last April, 13-month-old Christopher Martinez died after an unlicensed practitioner injected the boy five times with drugs at a store-front clinic in Santa Ana. Police there are looking into whether the King family provided the practitioner with the medicine.

Tustin Police Lt. Mike Shanahan said his agency has been sharing information with federal investigators, though the focuses of the two probes differ.

“Our concern is: Can these people who worked in the Los Hermanos Gift Shop shed light on what caused this child’s death?” Shanahan said. “[The federal] investigation is focusing on the smuggling end of things.”

He said Tustin police called in the FDA soon after baby Selene’s death to identify the medicine found at the gift shop. Local investigators then learned, he said, that a federal probe already was underway into the smuggling of pharmaceuticals across the border. But he said they only recently learned that the grand jury investigation was in progress.

Police officials say the King family has a history of selling illegal pharmaceuticals.

Oscar King and his father, Manuel Javier King, were arrested in October 1992 in connection with the sale of illegal pregnancy prevention drugs to women at a swap meet in Orange. The drugs, police said, contained markings indicating they were from Mexico. Both men were convicted.

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

Police also investigated family members but cleared them in a case involving the death of a 15-year-old boy in December 1997. A coroner could not determine whether the drugs they supplied caused the boy’s death.

Rosa King, Oscar’s sister, was convicted in 1998 on one count of selling misbranded drugs stemming from the sale of goods at her two stores on McFadden Avenue in Santa Ana, state investigators said. She was put on probation for three years and was fined $4,500. Angelina Cruz, a sales clerk who worked at one of the stores, pleaded guilty to the same charge and was given 40 hours of community service.

State drug investigators and Santa Ana police last week made a surprise search of Rosa King’s businesses but turned up no illicit pharmaceuticals, state and local investigators said.