The accused stabber in last month’s fatal attack on a UCSF social worker at SF General Hospital finally had a court appearance Tuesday, pleading not guilty, with his attorney saying “he was suffering a mental health crisis that day.”
We’re just now beginning legal proceedings in the case of the UCSF social worker who was stabbed and killed at SF General Hospital at the hospital’s HIV Ward 86 on December 4. That 51-year-old social worker Alberto Rangel died three days later, and the accused stabber, 34-year-old Wilfredo Tortolero-Arriechi, has been charged with murder. The whole tragedy has set off a separate controversy about safety at the hospital, particularly with regards to the suspect Tortolero-Arriechi, who had been seemingly stalking a certain other doctor (not the victim Alberto Rangel) at another medical facility earlier in the day, and who happened to bring a five-inch kitchen knife to the hospital.
The suspect Tortolero-Arriechi had not yet been arraigned, and oddly, was detained in the very hospital where the alleged crime happened, because SF General Hospital is where the SF County Jail psych ward is. But the arraignment finally did begin Tuesday, and the Chronicle reports that Tortolero-Arriechi pleaded not guilty to murder…