Published January 14, 2015
A second man was arrested in connection with the alleged theft of body parts from the cadaver program at the University of California, Los Angeles (search).
Ernest Nelson was arrested Sunday by University of California police for investigation of receiving stolen property, according to a university statement. The statement said Nelson was not a UCLA employee.
On Saturday, Henry Reid (search), director of the school's Willed Body Program (search), which makes donated bodies available for medical education and research, was arrested for investigation of grand theft for allegedly selling corpses and body parts for profit.
"The criminal investigation is ongoing," said Roxanne Moster, a spokeswoman for UCLA Medical Center.
Moster said another employee had also been placed on leave during the investigation, but she did not identify that person.
The 54-year-old Reid had been hired in 1997 to improve the school's record keeping of the donated cadavers.
He was put on leave in the past two weeks and was being held on $20,000 bail, said Deputy David Cervantes of the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department (search). He was scheduled to be arraigned Tuesday.
The university planned to seek felony charges against Reid, said Nancy Greenstein, director of police community services for the UCLA Police Department.
The university declined to release further details about Nelson's arrest Sunday but scheduled a press conference for Monday.
The cadaver program receives about 175 bodies each year for medical research and education and has a waiting list of more than 11,000. The program first came under scrutiny in 1993 when hazardous medical waste was discovered inside boxes of cremated human remains, something school officials said should not have happened.
https://www.foxnews.com/story/second-man-arrested-in-ucla-body-part-case