Girl, 3, Young Visitor Sought

Police were searching late Thursday for a 3-year-old girl and a 16-year-old runaway who apparently took the child from a Huntington Beach home Thursday morning while the mother slept.

Huntington Beach Police Sgt. Jim Dahl said the teen-ager, identified as Dana Jennifer O’Hair, had been staying with the child’s uncle and mother at a home in the 4900 block of Heil Avenue since Sunday.

The child, Jennifer Lend Ruengsri, who weighs about 50 pounds and is three feet tall, with dark brown hair and brown eyes, was last seen with O’Hair getting off an Orange County Transit District bus at Chestnut Street and Orange Avenue in Santa Ana about 11 a.m. Thursday, police said.

Dana O’Hair is described as 5 feet, 4 inches tall, about 110 pounds, with blue eyes and dark brown hair worn “punk” style, Dahl said. “Her hair is slick on one side and spiked on the other,” he said.

Dahl said that Jennifer’s uncle, 21-year-old Suchait Ruengsri, met O’Hair last Sunday outside a phone booth in Westminster and invited her to stay at his house because he felt sorry for her. Dahl said O’Hair played with the baby and asked the girl’s mother, Rungrachanee Ruengsri, 19, if she could be the baby’s “pretend” mother.

“Apparently this girl was involved in an accident last October when she was pregnant,” Dahl said, “and her baby was stillborn. Our feeling now is that she took this baby to replace that one.” When Jennifer’s mother awoke at 10:30 a.m. on Thursday, she discovered that her daughter, some clothing and her purse containing only $5 were gone, police said.

Dahl said police have since located O’Hair’s parents at their Anaheim residence. They apparently told police that their daughter ran away from home last year and that they rarely hear from her.

During the four days O’Hair stayed with the Ruengsri family, she befriended the little girl and played with her a lot, “so it wasn’t like the baby felt she was a stranger,” Dahl said. While police are treating the case as a kidnaping, Dahl said that at this point he is more interested in finding the baby than in prosecuting O’Hair.

“The bottom line is I want that baby back,” he said.”