Local News in Brief : Father of Lost Girl Is Booked

The father of an 18-month-old girl found wandering alone in a supermarket parking lot in Hawthorne Friday night was booked on suspicion of child endangerment Saturday when he and his wife went to the Hawthorne police station to report the child missing, police said.

The toddler had been lost since she became separated from her father, Gilbert Garcia, 28, of Hawthorne, shortly before 7 p.m. Friday, but the child’s parents did not report her missing until 8:50 a.m. Saturday morning, said Sgt. Rick Shindle.

An assistant store manager of the Safeway supermarket at Rosecrans and Prairie avenues found the child, dressed in yellow pants and a pink and white blouse, wandering between cars in the parking lot. She was asking for her father in Spanish, Shindle said.

Garcia told police that he had taken the child shopping with him at a shopping center and that the child “became lost,” Shindle said. “But instead of calling for help he left the area and spent the night at a friend’s house and didn’t say anything about it,” Shindle said.

The child spent Saturday night in the custody of the Department of Children’s Services. The agency placed her in a foster home, where she will remain at least until Monday, when social workers are to question her mother, Shindle said.

The child’s mother, whose name was not released, told police that when her child and husband did not come home Friday night, she thought her husband was in trouble and called various police stations, all the while assuming that the child somehow was being cared for by her husband, Shindle said.