Ex-Hospital Trainee Charged With Murder

A former physician trainee at Martin Luther King Jr./Drew Medical Center was charged Wednesday with murdering a deaf-mute man last year by overmedicating him with powerful sedatives during a sexual encounter at a hotel in Calexico, Calif.

Warren Claudius Lemons met 22-year-old MacArthur Townsend when the alleged victim was a patient at King/Drew. Townsend died shortly after police found him last April in respiratory distress in Lemons’ hotel suite.

Lemons, 40, is accused of murder and two counts of sexual assault for allegedly drugging Townsend and raping him with a foreign object. Police said a video of the encounter that Lemons apparently made provided strong evidence.

“He was in his room administering all these drugs. I mean, he knew what he was doing,” said Calexico Police Sgt. Gonzalo Gerardo, lead detective on the case. “At no time could [Townsend] say no, but he kept on giving him more medication.”

Lemons, whose medical license the Medical Board of California revoked in August, was arrested without incident at his mother’s home in Houston, police said.

He is at a jail facility in that area awaiting extradition to Imperial County. Bail was set at $1 million, Gerardo said.

Lemons’ attorney, who could not be reached for comment, has said his client will be exonerated.

In the hotel room, Lemons told police that he had probably given Townsend “too much medicine” while practicing respiratory intubations on him, according to a medical board legal petition.

“I must have messed up,” Lemons is quoted as telling officers, the petition says.

The case has added to King/Drew’s woes as it copes with a series of problematic deaths at the hospital.

Two months before the alleged slaying, Lemons barricaded himself and Townsend in an unused patient room at King/Drew, the Los Angeles County Department of Health Services acknowledged last year.

Safety police officers found Lemons with his hospital identification badge, videotaping equipment, soft restraints and a bottle of baby oil.

He had been fired more than two years earlier, but hospital officials did not confiscate his badge, because they were unable to determine whether he was still an employee, county officials said.

Police also seized 140 videotapes from Lemons, some of them showing naked men posing at his direction. The medical board filings described eight unidentified naked men in what appeared to be different examination rooms of a medical facility.

Calexico authorities still don’t know if the tapes were shot at King/Drew or a county-owned clinic affiliated with it.

The medical board also alleged that Lemons stole two resuscitation emergency kits from King/Drew, which were found during a search of his hotel room.

“The department intends to continue to cooperate fully in the investigation and provide whatever assistance prosecutors might need,” said John Wallace, a spokesman for the L.A. county health department.

It was while he was a family medicine trainee at King/Drew from 1999 to 2001 that Lemons met Townsend. Lemons told investigators that he had treated Townsend for cancer and sickle-cell anemia.

Lemons was discharged from the training program in July 2001, because he did not obtain a medical license within 24 months, as required by the medical board. He later received his license.

At the time of the alleged slaying, Lemons was working at a medical clinic for low-income patients in Brawley, not far from Calexico. Lemons and Townsend had remained friends and occasionally took trips together, according to police and friends of the deceased.

The video allegedly shows Lemons in the hotel room, administering drugs to Townsend, who is lying nude on a table.

Lemons allegedly strapped the younger man down and put a mask over his eyes.

He is shown moving Townsend’s body “into various positions on the table” so Lemons could massage the man’s genitals, the board said.

Townsend appeared to be “heavily medicated and, at times, appeared to be unconscious and having difficulty breathing,” according to the medical petition.

Imperial County Assistant Dist. Atty. Joe Beard said prosecutors had not decided whether to seek the death penalty.

Times staff writer Charles Ornstein contributed to this report.