Questions Mount Over Boy’s Death

While a Superior Court judge decides whether to call the first public jury inquest into a death in two decades, questions mounted Tuesday over why 9-year-old Jonathan Reid died last year after six weeks in the county’s care.

The district attorney’s office revealed in court Tuesday that it is conducting its own exhaustive investigation into the child’s death, in conjunction with the coroner’s office and the Pomona Police Department. Two Pomona detectives have been assigned to the case, which has been under investigation since the death was ruled a homicide in September, attorneys said.

Prosecutors are trying to determine whether Jonathan died June 9 at the hands of another person. They also are looking into whether the death was the result of criminal negligence or was accidental, Deputy Dist. Atty. Brian K. Kelberg told Judge Robert H. O’Brien during an hourlong hearing.

During the hearing, county attorneys argued against holding the inquest, and Kelberg agreed it was not necessary.

“We see no need for an inquest,” said Kelberg, who heads the district attorney’s specialized MedicoLegal unit. He added that his office could conduct an independent investigation.

Kelberg later cautioned during an interview that the case is extremely complicated. “We have not reached a final conclusion, and we certainly have access to far more information than the public has,” he said.

Jonathan was taken from his Gardena home a year ago, after Department of Children and Family Services social workers alleged that his mother, Debra Reid, was neglecting his medical needs. Jonathan suffered from severe asthma attacks and had recently been found to have juvenile diabetes.

Six weeks after he left home, Jonathan was dead. He had spent time in a children’s shelter, where his medication was changed, and in a mental hospital after he repeatedly tried to run away, according to medical records obtained by his mother. He was deemed suicidal and depressed, and was prescribed an antidepressant. At the time of his death, Jonathan had been living in the foster home 13 days.

Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Los Angeles) said Tuesday that she will request a federal civil rights investigation of Jonathan’s case. “There are a number of questions I think need to be answered,” she said, including why Jonathan was taken from his home and why the coroner’s office changed the autopsy reports and death certificate.

Already, some of those questions may have been answered by Victor Greenberg, an independent inspector general hired by the Board of Supervisors to investigate the deaths of all children in the care of the county. Greenberg briefed the supervisors Tuesday afternoon during a closed-door session.

Board Chairwoman Yvonne Brathwaite Burke, who said she could not comment on what was discussed, nonetheless took pains to defend the foster mother.

“There was nothing that [Greenberg] said that gave us reason to believe the foster mother didn’t do everything she could,” Burke said, adding that Greenberg concluded that the foster mother “was experienced in dealing with these kinds of children, children with health problems.”

Reid contends that the social workers exceeded their authority by taking her son. She also charges that the foster mother was not properly trained to give her son asthma medication.

The Los Angeles County coroner has determined that Jonathan died June 9 from the combined effects of an acute asthma attack and an overdose of the asthma medication Albuterol. But the mode of the boy’s death--from natural causes, homicide or undetermined causes--remains in dispute.

Changes in the autopsy report--altering the death from a homicide to undetermined--brought additional controversy to the case.

Kelberg told the judge that the report and death certificate were changed when additional information came to light. He did not elaborate, but details are contained in copies of the autopsy reports obtained by The Times.

A Sept. 17 report by Deputy Medical Examiner Pedro M. Ortiz-Colom stated: “The decedent had no access to the medication. It was administered to him by his caretaker. The measured blood level is not consistent with the prescribed dosage. This supports a conclusion of death at the hands of another. This case is moded as a homicide.”

But the report was amended after a toxicologist developed more information in December, records show.

“It is very likely that the very high concentration of Albuterol . . . was due to post-mortem redistribution” after the medication was given to the boy through an endotracheal tube in the emergency room of Pomona Valley Hospital Medical Center, the amended report said.

It notes unexplained levels of Albuterol in other parts of the body, as well as missing medications.

“It is possible that the missing [medication] was not given to [Jonathan] at the foster home and that the femoral blood Albuterol concentration is an artifact” of lifesaving efforts, wrote Christopher Rogers, chief of the coroner’s forensic medicine division. “If that is true, the case should be moded as natural.”

On the other hand, Rogers wrote, “it is also possible that the missing [medication] was given to the decedent at the foster home . . . and that the femoral blood Albuterol concentration is accurate. If this is true, the correct mode would be homicide.”

He concluded that, “based on the available information, it is not possible to distinguish between these two possibilities.” He recommended changing the mode of death to undetermined.

The change occurred in February.

By then, coroner’s officials had apparently learned that the chief medical examiner’s wife, pediatrician Vijay Lakshmanan, was one of the doctors who prescribed medication for the boy while he was in the county’s care.

In seeking the inquest, the mother’s attorney, L’tanya Butler, contended that the relationship placed the coroner’s office in a conflict of interest.

For now, the files remain sealed under court order.

“I think it is unfortunate, but understandable, that in circumstances where the court must operate under seal, the public may only be getting one side of the story,” said prosecutor Kelberg.