Man Charged With Murder in Mall Slaying

Hawthorne resident Joshua Daniel Lee, 22, was charged with murder and robbery Wednesday in the stabbing death of 66-year-old Diana Bragg at a Redondo Beach shopping mall.

Lee, who could face the death penalty if he is convicted, did not enter a plea during the hearing in Torrance Superior Court. He is being held without bail at a Los Angeles County jail.

According to police, Lee went to the busy South Bay Galleria on Monday morning looking for an easy robbery target. As dozens of witnesses watched, Lee attacked Bragg as she sat in her car near the entrance to Nordstrom. When she tried to escape, he stabbed her to death. Hours later, police said, Lee confessed to the murder and told officers he had planned to kill Bragg if she did not cooperate.

According to relatives, Lee has suffered from mental illness for several years, and his family had tried to obtain help for him. Lee’s mother, Victoria Ainsworth, had her son hospitalized from Jan. 8 to Jan. 11 in the psychiatric unit of Robert F. Kennedy Medical Center in Hawthorne.

She said that she tried to have the hospital keep him longer but was told that he did not pose a threat to himself or others and could not be held against his will for more than 72 hours.

A spokeswoman for the medical center, Carla Singleton Turner, declined to confirm that Lee had been a patient, saying that privacy laws prevented her from commenting.

“I knew Josh was not OK, and now we have to live with this,” said a tearful Ainsworth as she left the courthouse.

Four months ago, Lee lost his job at a retail store in Hawthorne, partly, his mother said, because of his behavior. Several former co-workers said that Lee acted strangely and that it was obvious he needed help.

Ainsworth said she had long been fearful that her son would develop symptoms of schizophrenia because his father, her ex-husband, developed schizophrenia when he was in his early 20s.

Lee’s grandfather, Bernard Ainsworth, said he had been concerned about his grandson’s mental health. “I was very leery of him,” said Ainsworth, widower of former Hawthorne Mayor Betty Ainsworth.

He described how his grandson would stare at people for long periods and sometimes throw his hands up or burst out laughing for no reason. “You’d look at him and wonder, ‘What’s wrong with you?’ ”

According to Hawthorne Police Lt. James McInerny, a longtime acquaintance of Lee’s family, Lee’s mother contacted the department after Lee was released from the psychiatric unit and asked detectives to speak with her son. After Lee was picked up for allegedly trespassing at an apartment from which he had been evicted last month, detectives brought him to the station for a talk.

“We were trying to intervene in a personal way, not a professional way, out of courtesy to his mother and the Ainsworth family,” said McInerny.

He said several officers talked to Lee about getting his life together. They gave him money for lunch and told him to come back for further discussion.

Lee accepted the lunch money but did not return.

“The next time we heard from him was when Redondo [Beach police] picked him up,” said McInerny.

McInerny said he was concerned about Lee’s marijuana use and misdemeanor arrests for theft and trespassing, but he never saw Lee demonstrate any signs of violent behavior.

Redondo Beach police said Wednesday that they are looking for a woman who contacted a Nordstrom employee regarding Lee shortly before Monday’s stabbing. According to detectives, the woman described Lee as acting suspiciously.

Contact Redondo Beach Police at (310) 379-2486