Police are investigating the possibility that a Department of Children and Family Services social worker fabricated the story that two assailants attacked her with acid outside her Santa Fe Springs office, a department spokesman said.
The alleged Aug. 19 attack on the 43-year-old social worker was the lead story on many local news broadcasts and triggered a manhunt for suspects.
The department’s director, Philip Browning, and a sheriff’s chief, James Hellmold, visited the Santa Fe Springs office to calm nerves and ordered a battery of new security provisions, including orders for social workers to enter the field in pairs or be accompanied by law enforcement.