After death of Baby Jasmine, skid row workers again ask why

The call came last week to the county’s child welfare hotline from an employee at the Union Rescue Mission.

Something seemed wrong with the 2-month-old girl who had arrived with her mother at the skid row shelter in June. The mother was acting strangely, mission employee Carol Picott said, and she worried that the baby was in danger.

Picott said she made the call Aug. 7. The next day, a county social worker arrived at the shelter but could not find the baby or her mother, county and mission officials said. On Aug. 9, they said, she returned and talked at length with the mother and evaluated the infant. The social worker was sufficiently reassured, so she left the child with the mother.

A day later, the baby was dead.

Some mission workers had stopped the mother, Ranetta Maxwell, 32, as she was about to leave the shelter Aug. 10 carrying her dead baby, Jasmine, in her arms.

“She had dressed the baby and was caring for the baby,” said Andy Bales, director of the mission. “I don’t know if she fully comprehended what had occurred.”

The death raises new questions about how the infant fell through the cracks of a system designed to protect children on skid row.

Detectives with the Los Angeles Police Department arrested Maxwell that Friday on suspicion of homicide, according to police. Detectives said it appeared Jasmine might have died of malnutrition and neglect, LAPD spokesman Kevin Maiberger said.

Police released Maxwell on Wednesday, after the L.A. district attorney’s office did not file charges. D.A. spokeswoman Jane Robison said a final decision about whether to prosecute would be made after further investigation. The coroner has not yet given the cause of death.

Maxwell couldn’t be located to discuss what happened, and officials at the mission said she hadn’t returned there since being released.

A report about Jasmine’s death prepared by the mission provides few details. According to the report, Maxwell came to Los Angeles from Atlanta and first turned up at the mission when she was four months pregnant. She told them she had been the victim of domestic violence.

After her baby was born, shelter workers said, Maxwell initially said she had had a boy and named him Michael Gabriel. They said Maxwell was seen roaming around skid row in June looking for Jasmine’s father, according to the report, which The Times obtained.

The county is investigating why the social worker, who has not been named, and her supervisors did not see signs of neglect and take the baby into protective custody.

“We have failed this child miserably,” said Supervisor Gloria Molina. “The bureaucracy broke down here. No one went to get the child here. The child should have been taken from the mother, but the social worker failed the child.”

Molina noted that the county has a “risk assessment team” on skid row and a social worker at the mission -- specifically to act quickly when there are reports of children in jeopardy.

The call to the hotline by a mission staffer about Jasmine’s welfare should have been a “red flag” that immediate action needed to be taken, Molina said. Picott, the rescue mission worker who made the call, later told her supervisors that the baby had looked sick and that the mother had acted evasively when approached about Jasmine’s health.

The details of the Aug. 9 meeting between the social worker, Jasmine and her mother are not clear. The county Department of Children and Family Services has declined to comment, citing confidentiality laws.

But the report prepared by the rescue mission said the social worker gave Maxwell a letter urging her to take Jasmine to a doctor that day.

Molina said a supervisor at the children and family services department had authorized that Thursday that Jasmine be taken into protective custody.

“Once called via the hotline, they go in and assess the child. It is my understanding the social worker here was told by a supervisor to remove the child,” Molina said.

Jasmine’s death comes two years after another high-profile death of an infant. In that case, a baby was found on a Monterey Park hotel bed with a fatal head injury.

That death prompted the county to strengthen a campaign to better protect children on skid row.

According to a county official at the time, the baby’s father had been given a housing voucher without being subjected to a full background check after seeking assistance from a skid row agency.

Such a check would have shown that the father had several children taken out of his custody in Washington state.

Coroner’s officials said the infant had been struck in the head and ruled his death a homicide. But no arrest was made.

With regard to Baby Jasmine, Molina questioned why prosecutors and police couldn’t continue to hold Maxwell until it was determined whether she should be charged with a crime.

She also faulted the Union Rescue Mission for not immediately informing county social workers about Jasmine when she first arrived at the shelter in June.

Mission President Bales said Jasmine was examined at the facility’s medical clinic three weeks ago and “deemed OK.” But a week later, officials there began to worry about her health.

In the wake of the tragedy, Bales said the mission has changed its policies to require a full screening by county officials of all children who enter the mission.

“From now on, the county is going to see family and children before our staff does. Wellness checks of every child will be done upon arrival,” he said.

The death of Jasmine (who in some documents is listed as “Jashline”) will probably rekindle a dispute over protecting children on skid row.

The Board of Supervisors has declared zero tolerance for families living on skid row and vowed to find them safer housing out of the area as soon as possible.

As part of that effort, the county created a special team of social workers, mental health professionals and others to assess homeless children temporarily living in and around downtown Los Angeles and refer them to housing and other social services.

One of the team’s offices is at the Union Rescue Mission.

But the approach drew fire from some who feared that homeless parents would avoid shelters and other skid row services if they believed county social workers could remove their children once they arrived.

As a result, the county’s assessment team drew up strict guidelines for how it operates. Though team workers sometimes roam downtown streets in search of homeless children, they do not seek out families in shelters. Instead, they wait until a family approaches them or is referred by shelter staff.

Jasmine and her mother were never referred to the assessment team at the Union Rescue Mission and thus were never evaluated, according to two county sources who asked not to be identified because they did not have authorization to talk about the case. The county heard about Jasmine only when the mission worker called the hotline.

Tony Bravo, an executive board member of the union that represents the county’s children’s social workers, warned against jumping to conclusions about the social worker involved in Jasmine’s case before a full investigation had been completed.

“I cannot imagine that any [social] worker is going to intentionally leave a child in harm’s way,” he said.

At the Union Rescue Mission, meanwhile, workers were grappling with what they could have done differently.

“You can imagine that we feel terrible grief and terrible guilt, rightly or wrongly. We’re just devastated that it could occur here,” Bales said.

“We are used to tragedy, but not babies.”

richard.winton@latimes.com

jack.leonard@latimes.com

Times staff writer Ashraf Khalil contributed to this report.