Newborn Found in Bag; Mother Held

A 2-day-old boy was found Thursday in a brown paper bag in bushes at a Tustin apartment complex. Police arrested his mother about three hours later.

Frank Hayes “was born Tuesday in the mother’s apartment,” said Lt. Chuck Crane, watch commander for the Tustin Police Department. The mother, Lajuna Shanetta Hayes, 18, “apparently just got pregnant, got scared and wanted to dump the baby.”

Attached to the bag was a handwritten note: “Whoever finds this take care of this baby please!” Crane said.

The baby, apparently healthy and uninjured, was taken to Childrens Hospital of Orange County for care, Crane said. His mother was booked into Orange County Jail on suspicion of child endangerment and child abandonment, both felonies.

Frank was found at 4:22 p.m. by a woman returning to her ground-floor apartment in the Walnut East Apartments. The woman, who asked authorities not to release her name, noticed the paper bag in the bushes outside her apartment and saw that it was moving.

Because the woman “was kind of hysterical . . . kind of upset by all this,” she summoned a neighbor to open the bag, Crane said. The pair found the infant, with blue eyes and dark brown hair, wrapped in a yellow knit blanket.

Frank was dressed in a white jump suit, with red and blue printing on the sleeves, Crane said. The words “I love Daddy” were embroidered in blue.

A door-to-door search of the area turned up a neighbor who directed police to an apartment in the same Tustin complex where a pregnant woman had been seen recently. The woman was Hayes, who told police the baby was hers, Crane said.

“We have no idea” of the father’s whereabouts, Crane said. Hayes “was living in Florida with her parents up until two months ago. Apparently her parents kicked her out . . . when they discovered she was pregnant.”

Last month, two abandoned boys were found in Orange County within 17 hours of each other, one in the front yard of a Garden Grove home, the other in a trash bin in Orange.

The first baby, a year old, was identified by his grandmother the same same day he was found; the second, 5 days old, was taken to Orangewood Children’s Home, the county’s emergency shelter.

Thursday night, Frank was taken to Childrens Hospital of Orange County, rather than Orangewood, because the county shelter had no room, Crane said.

“We’re crowded all the time,” said Don Vowels, duty officer for Orangewood. “There’s a lot of children waiting in hospitals because we don’t have a bed. That’s not an unusual thing.”