Holy Cross nursing assistant charged with sex attack on patient

A nursing assistant at Providence Holy Cross Hospital in Mission Hills has been arrested and charged with sexual battery on a patient, and Los Angeles police detectives  suspect there may be additional victims. 

Jeremias Diego, 44, allegedly assaulted the female patient Monday in her hospital bed while her sister lay asleep nearby in the darkened room, police said.

“After conducting several interviews, we now believe Diego may have done this to other patients as well,” said Det. Michael Brox, a senior detective at the LAPD's Mission police station.

Diego entered the 43-year-old woman’s room around 4 a.m., to take her vital signs and then removed some of the woman’s garments and touched her inappropriately under the bed covers, Lt. Paul Vernon said. 

The alleged assault was interrupted when the woman tossed a tissue box at her sleeping sister to awaken her, Vernon said. She and her sister reported the behavior to nurses, who immediately called police, Vernon said.

Diego, a Thousand Oaks resident, has worked as a nursing assistant at Holy Cross since April.

Administrators at Providence Holy Cross also told detectives of an earlier complaint lodged against Diego by a female patient.  

Napa State Hospital workers get improved alarm system

The Department of State Hospitals this week began replacing the lanyards used by employees at Napa’s psychiatric facility to carry personal alarms with a new design that poses no risk of strangulation, officials said.

Demands for an improved alarm system at Napa State Hospital intensified after the October 2010 strangulation of a psychiatric technician on the fenced hospital grounds, where the old devices did not work. However, the pilot program rolled out last month required employees to wear the high-tech wireless devices around their necks.

The lanyards were designed to break apart in the back if pulled on with enough force. But employees maintained the devices still could be used as garrotes by someone pulling from behind. Within days of the rollout, a nurse was assaulted in just that fashion. (He was treated and released from a local hospital.)
State officials then allowed workers to wear the alarms on belt loop clips instead, while Napa administrators gave a psychiatric technician who formerly designed outdoor equipment the green light to develop alternatives.

Mike Jarschke’s design has three breakaway points. They can sustain the force needed for a user to pull on the alarm hard enough to sound it. But if greater force is applied -- in an assault, for example -- the lanyard breaks in three places.

White Memorial hospital looking for relatives of Jane Doe patient

White Memorial Medical Center is asking for the public's help in identifying a woman who does not have any identification and does not know her name.

The Spanish-speaking woman was brought into the emergency room July 14 after being picked up by an ambulance in the parking lot of St. Martha's Church in Huntington Park. 

She is Latina, with brown eyes and gray hair, and is 5 feet tall and weighs about 150 pounds.

Hospital officials estimate that she may be between 50 and 60 years old. 

Anyone with further information is asked to call the hospital at (323) 268-5000 and ask the operator to page beeper 494. 

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Photo: This unidentified woman was brought into the emergency room July 14. Credit: White Memorial Medical Center

Patient data stolen from Temple Community Hospital

Temple Community Hospital in Los Angeles is warning about 600 patients that their personal and medical information was taken earlier this summer.

The theft occurred in early July, when someone stole a computer from a locked office in the radiology department, hospital staff announced Friday. The computer contained CT scans of patients, their names, the reason for the scans and the patients' hospital account numbers. The data included scans that occurred between Jan. 1 and July 2. The hospital has back-up copies of the scans.

Hospital officials assured patients that their financial information, Social Security numbers and personal contact information was not on the computer. Patients who have further questions can contact the hospital at (888) 633-6122.

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Grocery tours teach Boyle Heights residents about nutrition

Cedonia Castillo, 81, said she knows salt and sugar are bad for her health. But the Boyle Heights resident, who has diabetes, heart disease and hypertension, said she doesn't know what other foods to avoid.

So when she heard that a dietitian from White Memorial Medical Center planned to lead health tours of the nearby grocery store Wednesday morning, Castillo decided to come. And she brought along several friends. 

"We have to pay attention to our health," said Castillo in Spanish. "We came to know what things we can eat and what things hurt us."

The tours took place at Food 4 Less, where nurses were also doing blood pressure checks and handing out information about heart disease. The tours were designed to educate Latinos, who have high rates of heart disease, about the dangers of a poor diet and a lack of exercise, said Belinda Gordillo, spokeswoman for the American Heart Assn. Gordillo said residents in low-income neighborhoods often believe that they can't afford to eat better. 

32 hurt after Blue Line train hits Metro bus near downtown

Nearly three dozen people were hurt when a Blue Line train hit a Metro bus early Monday near downtown Los Angeles, but authorities are calling the accident “a relatively minor collision” and say none of the passengers suffered major injuries.

The train, which was running southbound, clipped the back of a Line 51 local bus that was in the intersection of San Pedro Street and Washington Boulevard at 6:56 a.m., according to the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority.

The bus -– which runs between Wilshire Center and the Artesia Transit Center -– was standing-room-only with about 50 passengers aboard, according to Metro spokesperson Marc Littman, and when the train hit it, “the bus then spun and hit a light pole.”

PHOTOS: Metro Blue Line train collides with transit bus

After about 9:30 a.m., authorities said about 48 passengers had been assessed but that there were 32 total injuries, all of which were minor except for one person classified as “ill.” They were taken to nine area hospitals and all were listed in good to fair condition.

The bus sustained major damage and there were delays on both the Blue and Expo lines until about 9:10 a.m., when normal service resumed.

“The incident was every paramedic’s worst nightmare -- a traffic collision between mass transit vehicles,” said Brian Humphrey of the Los Angeles Fire Department. “Thankfully LAFD responders were able to rely on their training in what proved to be a relatively minor collision.”

Humphrey said the train did not derail.

The accident remains under investigation.

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Photo: A woman is taken to an ambulance and transported from the crash scene at Washington Boulevard and San Pedro Street near downtown Los Angeles. Credit: Francine Orr / Los Angeles Times

Woman killed after car flips, crashes into tree in Valencia

A woman was killed and a man was injured early Sunday morning after their car flipped over a median in Valencia and crashed into a tree, officials said.

The accident happened about 1:30 a.m. on McBean Parkway, just south of Avenida Navarre, according to Los Angeles County Sheriff's Sgt. Rich Nagler.

Nagler said paramedics took the victims to Henry Mayo Newhall Memorial Hospital, where the woman was declared dead. He said the man was being treated for injuries.

Nagler did not release the names or ages of the victims, and did not know which was driving at the time of the accident. 

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Cal/OSHA to investigate assault on Napa State Hospital staffer

California workplace safety regulators said Friday that they have opened an investigation into a patient assault of a Napa State Hospital psychiatric technician.

The employee was wearing a personal alarm on a lanyard around his neck, as required, when a patient punched him Wednesday evening and then grabbed the lanyard from both sides and attempted to choke him, according to a hospital incident report. The employee was treated and released from a local emergency room.

The assault occurred a day after the rollout of the much-anticipated alarm system, devised in the wake of the October 2010 strangulation death of employee Donna Gross.

Although Napa State Hospital employees have said they generally are pleased with the system, which transmits and receives data through wireless tags, they have raised concerns about having to wear lanyards around their necks. On Thursday, Department of State Hospitals Deputy Director Kathy Gaither said all employees soon will have the option of wearing the alarm on a belt-loop clip instead.

Mother arrested after leaving children in hot car

A young Los Angeles woman was arrested Saturday on suspicion of child endangerment after allegedly leaving her two small children in a locked car while she went shopping in Cudahy as temperatures soared outside.

Arely Amaya, 18, is suspected of leaving her 1-year-old son and 2-week-old daughter strapped in their car seats as the outside temperature reached 92 degrees. The car interior was probably 10 to 15 degrees hotter, and the children were hot and sweaty to the touch, said Lt. Daniel Lopez of the East Los Angeles sheriff’s station.

Deputies were alerted to the children’s plight by a passerby, who saw the car parked in the 7900 block of Atlantic Avenue about 12:30 p.m.

A deputy was able to unlock the car through a partially open rear window and the children were kept in an air-conditioned patrol car until paramedics arrived, Lopez said.

“We really appreciate it when citizens call us with information like this,” he said. “We’d like to thank that citizen who placed that call.”

Investigators estimated that the children had been confined in the car 20 to 25 minutes.

The children were in stable condition Saturday night at St. Francis Medical Center in Lynwood. Amaya was in custody in lieu of $105,000 bail and faces possible felony charges.

Each year, dozens of children left in parked vehicles die from hyperthermia, an acute condition that occurs when the body absorbs more heat than it can handle, according to the National Weather Service.

Even on a mild day, the temperature inside a parked vehicle can rapidly rise to a dangerous level for children, pets and even adults.  Leaving the windows slightly open does not significantly help, the weather service advises. The effects can be more severe on children because their bodies warm at a faster rate.

The Weather Service noted that, in one recent case, a child died of hyperthermia in a car when the outside temperature was only 81 degrees.

“No amount of time is safe to keep a child or pet in a vehicle when temperatures are this high,” Lopez said.

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Woman allegedly kidnaps baby to prove fake pregnancy

  A woman who allegedly tried to kidnap a baby from a Garden Grove hospital told police that she was trying to convince her estranged husband that she had been pregnant and had given birth, officials said.

Wearing scrubs and a visitor pass, Grisel Ramirez, 48, of Garden Grove allegedly walked into a room in the maternity ward of Garden Grove Hospital Medical Center early Monday and attempted to kidnap a newborn girl, police said.

She “tells the mother, ‘Hey, why don't you take a shower before your family gets here?’” Garden Grove police Lt. Jeff Nightengale said. While the mother was distracted, Ramirez  placed the baby in a tote bag and attempted to leave the floor, Nightengale added.

An alarm triggered by a tag on the baby’s ankle alerted hospital staff to the attempted kidnapping. As a result, a doctor stopped Ramirez at the doors and returned the baby safely to her mother, police said.

Despite being separated for months, Ramirez told her husband that she was pregnant with a girl, officials said. When the due date passed, she needed to produce a baby, police said Ramirez told them.

“He thought she was really pregnant,” Nightengale said. “Obviously, he didn’t have any idea that she was going to kidnap a child.”

Ramirez has also been linked to reports of a suspicious woman seen in an Anaheim hospital asking expecting mothers the sex and due date of their baby, police said.

One of the mothers approached by the woman called Anaheim police, who in turn issued a warning to local hospitals, officials said.

By late Tuesday afternoon, police were not aware of any other hospitals where Ramirez might have gone to.