Psychiatrist Calls Murder Suspect Mentally Ill : Crime: Court-appointed doctor says Donna Fleming, accused of tossing her two small sons off a Long Beach bridge, killing one, is unfit to stand trial. Arraignment is postponed so a second evaluation can be made.

A court-appointed psychiatrist Thursday added his name to the list of people who say Donna Jean Fleming, the young mother accused of throwing her two young sons and herself off a Long Beach bridge in February, is mentally ill and unfit to stand trial.

Part of the letter from Dr. Kaushal Sharma was read at what was to be Fleming’s arraignment in Long Beach Superior Court on charges of murder and attempted murder. Despite agreeing with the physician’s conclusion that Fleming, 24, was psychotic, paranoid and prone to hallucinations, her attorney, Stephen Pace, requested a second mental evaluation.

Pace, also a longtime friend of Fleming and her family, contended that Sharma was a “conservative” physician who frequently performed such evaluations for prosecutors, and he requested that another physician also evaluate Fleming.

Judge Arthur Jean agreed to postpone the arraignment so a second evaluation could be performed, and scheduled a competency hearing April 13.

Fleming is accused of murdering her youngest son, Craig Alan Fleming, 1 1/2, and attempting to murder 3-year-old Michael Robert Fleming when she dropped them from a bridge into the Los Angeles River on Feb. 21. Michael Robert has recovered and is living with his father.

Sharma’s evaluation was the first medical opinion offered on Donna Fleming’s mental competency since her arrest. But her attorney, her husband and several neighbors and acquaintances have said the woman’s grip on reality appeared to be slipping in the months before the incident.

Fleming’s husband, Michael, an oil refinery worker, said he had been encouraging his wife to seek counseling or medical help for several months before she was arrested.

“She talked about the ‘little man under the fridge in the basement,’ ” Michael Fleming said. “We don’t have a basement.”

Sitting in the family’s San Pedro home Thursday, surrounded by photographs and framed birth certificates--complete with tiny footprints--of his two boys, an emotional Michael Fleming said he would not be at the arraignment because he could never forgive his wife, but also because he knew that his wife has mental problems. “It was obvious,” he said.

Michael Fleming now sports a tattoo that reads, “For my son, I love you. You’ll live in my heart forever,” and has the name Craig inside a heart. He has been convicted twice of spousal abuse after police were called by neighbors during arguments. But he has maintained that his wife had grown increasingly paranoid over the six months before her arrest, accusing him of having affairs with neighbors and forcing him at one point to flee to a motel. She was the instigator of the fights, he contended.

Friends and neighbors of the Flemings said Donna began sitting at home for days on end in the months before the incident, the shades drawn, watching soap operas. An upstairs neighbor said she once saw Donna biting her own arms and hands, drawing blood. Other neighbors said she would sometimes ramble incoherently.

Pace said Thursday he has met with Fleming five or six times since her arrest, and that she was “hearing voices” and spoke frequently of “the invisible people from the federation.”

He expressed hope that the antidepressant and anti-hallucinogenic drugs she is taking would help. “I am convinced the doctors will make her well,” Pace said.

Clad in the salmon-colored jail jumpsuit that denotes an inmate with a possible mental condition, Fleming sat quietly during Thursday’s hearing. As she was led away, she mouthed the words, “I love you,” to her mother, Joyce Overton, and both women burst into tears.

Fleming is scheduled to return to Los Angeles Superior Court on April 13 for the competency hearing. Should she be found unfit to stand trial, Fleming probably would be sent to a mental hospital until she is deemed able to aid in her own defense.