CULT LEADER HELD FOR MENTAL EVALUATION

By staff writers

20 September 2010

THE woman believed to be the leader of a small religious sect in Palmdale, California, was held for questioning and a mental evaluation.

The group of five adults and eight children was feared to be taking part in a mass suicide, but was found alive and well after a 22-hour search involving at least 50 deputies, as well as helicopters and volunteers on horseback, combing a 1,831-square km area.

Sheriff's Department spokesman Steve Whitmore said Reyna Marisol Chicas, 32, identified as the sect's leader by the missing persons' families, was "disingenuous" about her identity and gave a false name when the group was approached by police in Jackie Robinson Park near Palmdale.

The other 12 members of the group, which included Chicas’s children, voluntarily agreed to be taken to the Palmdale sheriff's station.

The group was found sitting on blankets and praying in the park around noon local time after a resident spotted them and contacted police. Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department spokesman Capt. Mike Parker said they seemed shocked that authorities were looking for them.

"They said, 'We are Christians, and we would never harm ourselves,'" said Parker.

Parker said the 13 - part of a "cult-like" religious group - left behind evidence indicating they were anticipating the Rapture or some catastrophic event, which prompted the California Highway Patrol (CHP) to issue an alert for three vehicles they were thought to be traveling in.

"It is believed, through further investigation, that [their] intentions are to commit mass suicide," said a CHP alert.

According to Whitmore, "the word suicide was never used" in the notes the group left behind, but there were "allegorical references" to seeing Jesus Christ and dead relatives that led authorities to believe they might have planned to commit mass suicide.

Whitmore said the religious group appeared to take "an unorthodox approach to a western religion," though he could not say which one. He said authorities do not know if the group was related to another religious group, had broken off from one, or was a small self-contained group.

Whitmore was updating reporters on the search for the group when a uniformed officer approached the podium and told him they had been found.

The group had last been seen outside Knight High School in Palmdale around 3:00am Saturday, praying in a van parked outside the school. When a deputy asked what they were doing there, they said they were praying to stop sex and violence in schools. At this point the group had not yet been reported missing and the deputy left them.

Whitmore said police would follow up the case extensively and the Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services would be involved. The children in the group, six boys and two girls, ranged in age from three to 17.

No criminal charges are pending against Chicas, but she will undergo psychological evaluation before she is released, Whitmore said.