Mental patient with AIDS accused of attempted mur-der

BYLINE: By G. LUTHER WHITINGTON

SECTION: Domestic News 

DATELINE: LOS ANGELES

 A mental patient who allegedly raped a mentally ill woman at a hospital was arrested on suspicion of attempted murder for the attack because he tested positive for the deadly AIDS virus, authorities said.

Ben Lezine, 31, of Los Angeles, was arrested at Los Angeles County-University of Southern California Medical Center just before his scheduled release Thursday. He was the second person arrested for attempted murder in Los Angeles County on the basis of being an alleged AIDS carrier.

''We had to expedite this arrest,'' detective Bill Pavelic said Friday. ''Despite our pleas to hold him, the hospital was about to let him go. We had to book him.''

Lezine allegedly lured an unidentified 26-year-old woman -- also a mental patient -- to his room on Ward 3B of the County-USC psychiatric building Sept. 3 and attacked her, said Pavelic, a detective with the police Mental Evaluation Unit.

Lezine had reportedly been in and out of different psychiatric facilities for years, according to Pavelic, and was admitted to County-USC after threatening his mother.

Pavelic said he could not comment on whether Lezine was aware that he had tested positive for acquired immune deficiency syndrome, a deadly disease that afflicts mostly homosexual men and intravenous drug users.

The detective also declined to say when Lezine, who was held Friday in isolation at County Jail, was given a test that indicated he had been exposed to the AIDS virus.

In late June, Joseph Markowski, a 29-year-old prostitute afflicted with acquired immune deficiency syndrome, was taken to the same hospital for psychiatric care after he attempted suicide. Despite pleas by police that Markowski be held, he was released on schedule only to be arrested a day later on suspicion of attempted murder for allegedly selling AIDS contaminated blood.