Missing Baby Is Discovered at Orphanage

A 6-month-old baby girl reported stolen Sept. 6 from a busy downtown Tijuana street has been found at a nearby orphanage, authorities said Thursday.

Virginia Esther Angel Ventura, who was the subject of a much-publicized search that included the FBI, was apparently taken to the Casa de la Esperanza orphanage, located several miles south of Tijuana, no more than a day after her abduction.

The baby was reunited with her parents Thursday at the orphanage, said an official with the Baja California State Judicial Police.

Apparently, the baby was taken to the orphanage on Sept. 7 by municipal police who were unaware the child was being sought. Police in Tijuana were unable to explain why it took nearly three weeks to discover that the child was at the orphanage.

Gary Laturno, an FBI spokesman in San Diego, said an FBI agent went to Tijuana Thursday and verified that the child had been found and returned to her family, who are part of Tijuana’s close-knit community of poor Mixtec Indian migrants from the Mexican interior state of Oaxaca.

“The child was taken to the orphanage within hours . . . not more than a day for certain,” Laturno said.

“There is evidence to indicate there was a kidnaping,” Laturno said, but he added that the FBI considers the case closed. The FBI would only have jurisdiction if the child had been brought into the United States.

“Fortunately, it ended like it did,” said Laturno. The FBI interviewed a woman suspect who lives in the Los Angeles area, but has refused to identify her or where she lives.

Relatives of the missing girl believed a San Bernardino woman may have been involved in the abduction because the woman had approached a pregnant Mixtec Indian woman in downtown Tijuana several weeks ago and asked to buy her baby when it was born.

Police in San Bernardino confirmed that they had questioned a resident there regarding her possible knowledge of the case, but would say little else.

The child’s mother, Esther Ventura Gonzalez, a Tijuana street vendor, was selling artificial flowers on Sept. 6 at Revolution Avenue and 7th Street, an area crowded with American tourists. She was accompanied by her 8-year-old son and was carrying her baby in a blanket.

About 1 p.m., a blond American woman, who spoke broken Spanish, approached Gonzalez and said she admired the little girl. The woman asked to pick up the baby. The mother was momentarily distracted, and when she turned back, she saw the woman running away with her daughter.

Gonzalez and her son gave chase, but the woman jumped into a car and drove off before they could catch her.