Author: Kimi Yoshino

A young couple is scheduled to appear in Los Angeles Superior Court on Friday afternoon after a woman threw her boyfriend’s puppy into a Hawthorne street during an argument, authorities said.

Los Angeles resident Danielle Graham, 21, was reportedly arguing with 24-year old Inglewood resident Hakeem Funtua around 1 p.m. Wednesday when she dragged the female pit bull puppy by the chain attached to its collar and threw the dog into ongoing southbound traffic on Prairie Avenue, near the intersection of 130th Street, said Hawthorne Police Lt. Scott Swain.

Two Hawthorne police officers witnessed the incident and attempted to arrest Graham, who resisted. In the ensuing physical struggle in a nearby parking lot, Funtua joined the skirmish in an apparent attempt to aid Graham, authorities said.

The officers pepper sprayed the couple and called for backup when Graham and Funtua continued to fight with officers. The officers sustained minor injuries, authorities said.

Graham was arrested on suspicion of animal cruelty and assaulting a peace officer. She was being held on $50,000 bail. Funtua was arrested on suspicion of assaulting a peace officer. He was being held on $10,000 bail.

— Amina Khan

Photo of Graham. Hawthorne Police Department via KTLA News.

A woman’s body has been found near Castaic Lake inside the back of a vehicle marked with warnings that it contained hazardous materials, officials said.

A deputy noticed the vehicle — seemingly abandoned — parked off the side of the road about 9:30 a.m. Tuesday, said Los Angeles County Sheriff’s spokesman Steve Whitmore. Upon closer inspection, the deputy noticed a woman "slumped over the back seat and not moving," Whitmore said, but it is unclear whether the woman is still alive.

The windows of the vehicle were covered with messages indicating that the car was hazardous to open, Whitmore said. The deputy immediately called for assistance in the area of Lake Hughes and Dry Gulch roads.  A hazardous materials team and the sheriff’s arson explosives team are responding.

[Updated at 2:42 p.m.: Whitmore said the woman died as the result of a
suicide. Investigators believe she mixed a cocktail of
chemicals and then breathed in the deadly hydrogen sulfide gas trapped inside the car. She placed signs on the windows to
warn responding authorities of the deadly gas.]  

— Richard Winton

Photo: KTLA

Emergency room doctors and on-call specialists treating uninsured patients at private hospitals in Los Angeles County could see county payments slashed under a proposal before supervisors today.

The rate cuts could force private hospitals to close emergency rooms, sending more patients to crowded county hospitals, officials said.

L.A. County reimburses doctors 27% of the cost of providing care to the uninsured during their first three days of care at private hospitals. Under the proposal, that reimbursement rate would be reduced to 18% as of July 1. Supervisors last reduced the rate from 29% in January 2009.

About 4,700 doctors would see payments cut under the proposal, according to Carol Meyer, chief network officer for the county’s Department of Health Services. Under the new rate, doctors would receive 43% of what Medi-Cal pays for the same services.

“The health department has a $200-million deficit. The state’s not going to give us anything to fix it. There is no one to backfill,” Meyer said.

The county had expected to pay doctors with $9 million from the state’s Emergency Medical Services Appropriation. But state lawmakers eliminated the fund, and as the number of uninsured grows, private doctors are expected to file more claims than ever with the county this year, Meyer said — an estimated 350,000.

“There’s no new source of funding to fill that gap,” Meyer said.

Doctors will likely look to hospitals to make up the difference, officials said. If they can’t, hospitals may lose doctors and be forced to close emergency rooms.

“It depends just how much pressure is put on those hospitals,” said Jim Lott, executive vice president of the Hospital Assn. of Southern California, “Some hospitals could be pushed over the edge by this.”

More than half of Los Angeles County’s 72 hospitals are operating at a deficit and two are in bankruptcy, Lott said. Countywide, 11 hospitals have closed since 2002, all of which had emergency rooms, he said.

Meyer said county officials consulted with doctors and hospital officials before proposing the rate cuts. But doctors said they would have appreciated more time to propose alternatives.

“It seemed like it happened all of a sudden,” said Dr. Robert Bitonte, president of the Los Angeles County Medical Assn. “It will impact indigent care, there’s no doubt.”

— Molly Hennessy-Fiske

An 18-year-old Manhattan Beach man was arrested at Pacific Elementary School on Monday after reports surfaced Friday that he had offered to pay a third-grader for his urine.

Kevin Manuel Duron was taken into custody after reappearing at the elementary school Monday, said Manhattan Beach Police Det. Sgt. Brian Brown.

Duron allegedly entered a boys bathroom on the campus and offered to pay one boy several dollars to urinate into a cup, Brown said.

When he failed to persuade him, police said, he apparently returned for a second try.

Brown said he was struck by the Mira Costa High School graduate’s persistence: "I would not have anticipated that he would have gone back again."

Duron might have been collecting the urine to use to pass a drug test, authorities said.

One of the students solicited late last week told a parent, who alerted school officials, who then notified police. When Duron returned to campus Monday, a school employee spotted him and alerted school authorities.

Although originally arrested on suspicion of annoying or molesting a child, the Los Angeles district attorney reduced the severity of the charges to two counts of failing to register with a school office before entering school grounds. He was scheduled to be arraigned in a Torrance courthouse Wednesday.

"These days, nothing surprises me, but it was very unusual case," Brown said. "Soliciting [urine] at an elementary school is a new one to me."

A spokeswoman for the Manhattan Beach Unified School District said this had never happened before and that school officials followed protocol to notify authorities.

— Amina Khan

Sen. Dianne Feinstein on Tuesday called for a moratorium on expanding a toxic-waste landfill in the impoverished Central Valley enclave of Kettleman City, where residents have reported a handful of rare birth deformities over a recent 14-month period.

The California Democrat also directed her staff to examine the feasibility of securing federal funds to address the town’s drinking water, which contains high levels of arsenic.

“I am very concerned about the surge in birth defects occurring in Kettleman City,” Feinstein said in a statement. “It is my view that there should be no expansion of the toxic dump site until we know with certainty whether it is a cause of this serious situation.”

Read more at www.latimes.com/greenspace.