Inmate Treated for AIDS Dies

A 33-year-old inmate, who would have completed his 180-day sentence for statutory rape today, died Tuesday in the jail ward at County-USC Medical Center where he was being treated for acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS), authorities said.

A Sheriff’s Department spokeswoman said that Wert Granville Yarbrough of El Segundo had been on the critical list at the medical center since April 13 and died of a heart attack early Tuesday.

However, the Los Angeles County coroner’s office said the cause of Yarbrough’s death will not be determined until after an autopsy today.

Los Angeles Superior Court records in Torrance show that Yarbrough pleaded no contest to charges of unlawful sexual intercourse with a 14-year-old El Segundo girl last October. El Segundo police reports indicate that Yarbrough was also sexually involved with another teen-age girl, but he was not charged in that case.

Both girls consented to having sex with Yarbrough, court documents say, but neither was old enough legally to consent. The girl with whom he was convicted of having illegal intercourse is now undergoing testing at UCLA Medical Center to determine whether she has AIDS, authorities said.

El Segundo police told the district attorney’s office, however, that the second girl has moved out of state, and authorities are attempting to locate her.

AIDS is a virus that attacks the body’s immunological system.