11 Children Taken From Home in Cocaine Investigation

Eleven children were removed from a home in Los Angeles and placed in foster care while police began investigating allegations of cocaine use among several adults who lived there, authorities said Thursday.

The children, ranging from infancy to 15 years old, were taken from the home late Wednesday and placed in protective care until a Juvenile Court can determine whether they could safely return to their small home in the 600 block of W. 82nd Street, police said.

The case came to light after Los Angeles County social workers began investigating reports that a baby was born Jan. 25 under the influence of cocaine, police said. In talks with a social worker, the baby’s 12-year-old sister mentioned drug use at the home, Police Lt. Otis Bodine said.

However, no arrests were made, and police said it was unclear Thursday whether charges would be filed against the baby’s parents, Elias Meza and Leonor Buenrostro, or any of several other adults believed to live in the house.

Police were still looking for evidence and attempting to interview the Spanish-speaking children, Bodine said.

“When our officers went out to the location for a preliminary investigation (Wednesday), they apparently saw what, in their minds, appeared to be narcotics paraphernalia,” Bodine said. “But none of that was taken into custody.”

Bodine said he could not explain why the suspected paraphernalia--found in a shed in the home’s backyard--was not confiscated. When officers returned to the home early Thursday, the paraphernalia was no longer there, he said.

Buenrostro, 33, who was still at the home Thursday, said in Spanish that neither of the two families living there uses cocaine. About a week before her baby daughter was born at Martin Luther King Jr./ Drew Medical Center, she had a toothache and a friend gave her some cocaine to rub on the tooth to ease the pain, Buenrostro said.

She said she does not know if that could have gotten into the baby’s system.

Appearing tearful, Buenrostro acknowledged that her 12-year-old daughter had talked with county authorities at school, but she attributed the allegations to things her daughter has seen in the neighborhood.

“She has a lot of things in her head, and she doesn’t know what she’s saying,” Buenrostro said.

Antonia Conejo, 40, another resident of the home, said residents of the neighborhood sometimes sneaked into the unfenced backyard to use drugs. Conejo said the drug use did not involve her or her three children--ages 11, 13 and 15.

The children have found drug paraphernalia in the yard, she said.

The two mothers, who were not at home when authorities removed the children late Wednesday, said that they did not know where the youngsters were being housed and that they were extremely worried about their welfare.

Conejo said her 13-year-old daughter--who has spina bifida, a spinal column defect--was running a fever when she was removed.

Although the police assured her that the child would be taken to a doctor if she became ill, “the police don’t know her problems like I do,” she said.

Emery Bontrager, a spokesman for the county Department of Children’s Services, said he could not comment on the medical condition of the children. However, he said that the children were being housed at more than one home in the county, and that the parents were entitled to know the location if they contacted the county.

A Juvenile Court hearing is expected Monday, he said.

No Supervision

“When a hospital calls us and says, ‘We have a baby that has drugs in his blood,’ we open a case,” Bontrager said. “We go out and investigate the home. And in the course of investigating the home, if we find other children in the family, we evaluate and assess them to see if they are safe and being cared for.”

The children were taken into custody, in part, because of the drug allegations and, in part, because they were found without adult supervision, Bontrager said.