Suspect in Mall Slaying Found Hanged in Cell

The man arrested last week in the fatal stabbing of a 66-year-old Bel-Air woman in the parking lot of a Redondo Beach shopping mall was found dead in his jail cell Friday morning in what authorities believe was a suicide.

Joshua Daniel Lee, who suffered from mental illness, according to his family, was found hanging from a bedsheet in his one-man cell at the Men’s Central Jail in Los Angeles, said Sheriff’s Deputy David Cervantes.

Authorities said Lee, 22, was discovered by an inmate who was working at the time. Deputies performed cardiopulmonary resuscitation, but were unable to revive him, Cervantes said. He was pronounced dead at 12:42 a.m.

Lee was arrested Jan. 29 after allegedly stabbing Diane Bragg to death at the South Bay Galleria. Lee allegedly killed Bragg in the mall’s parking lot, forcing his way into her Mercedes sport utility vehicle in what police said was a kidnap and robbery attempt.

Bragg, a grandmother of seven, resisted Lee and rolled out of the SUV. Lee followed Bragg, viciously attacking her on the ground in front of startled onlookers, witnesses said. Lee tried to run away but was tackled by a pair of men working at the mall, who held him until police arrived.

Redondo Beach police said last week that Lee had confessed to killing Bragg.

After being booked at the downtown Los Angeles jail on Jan. 31, Lee was immediately placed in a special mental health unit, said David Meyer, chief deputy director of the Los Angeles County Department of Mental Health.

Lee was released from the unit Feb. 2, and placed among the general population. Meyer would not say why Lee was put back into the general population, citing confidentiality laws.

Sheriff’s deputies said Lee was not on a suicide watch but was housed in a cell checked by deputies every hour.

Last week Lee’s mother, Victoria Ainsworth, said her son was mentally ill and that she had him hospitalized in the psychiatric unit of the Robert F. Kennedy Medical Center in Hawthorne for three days in January.

Ainsworth said Friday that she had warned authorities that he could hurt himself.

“I told them he could do this,” she said tearfully. “I told [his lawyer]. I told the people at the jail in Redondo Beach. I told the media, but no one would listen.”

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Times staff writer Elise Gee contributed to this story.