Girl, 7, Shares Cocaine With Pals; Mother Arrested

The mother of a 7-year-old girl was arrested for placing a golf ball-sized chunk of cocaine in the backpack of her daughter, who sampled it with friends during their lunch period at a San Fernando Valley school, authorities said Tuesday.

Nine students at Canoga Park Lutheran School, who told teachers they tasted the substance out of curiosity Monday, were taken to a hospital after it was found to be cocaine.

A few of the children complained of stomachaches, police said, but all were released to their parents in good health.

If the children had ingested more of the substance, it could have been life-threatening, authorities said.

‘Spit It Out’

“It tasted like medicine so I spit it out,” said Sara Comden, 7, one of the friends who licked the cocaine chunk when it was passed around.

The children said they thought it might be candy or sugar.

The cocaine was taken away from the students by Sara’s older sister, Sacha Comden, 11, who saw the group with it in the schoolyard and took it to the school office.

“I thought it was chalk,” said Sacha, a sixth-grader. “It was in a dirty, plastic bag. They said they didn’t know what it was but were eating it. I didn’t want them to get sick so I took it.

“I didn’t think it was drugs. Why would a little kid have drugs”?

Police said the cocaine was brought to school by the daughter of Maria Christina Torres, 39, a Colombian national who lives in Topanga Canyon. Torres, who had a year-old drug case against her dismissed last week, was arrested Monday afternoon on charges of cocaine possession and child endangerment when she came to the school in the 7300 block of Jordan Avenue to pick up her daughter.

Released on $100,000 Bail

She was later released from the Van Nuys jail on $100,000 bail. Her daughter and a 5-year-old son were taken into custody by the Los Angeles County Division of Youth Services and later released to a relative, police said.

Waldo Cloeter, principal of the 214-student school, which provides drug awareness programs in upper classes, said the incident will spark the start of similar programs for the lower grades.

“I guess now we have to look at it as a threat to all children,” he said.

Police said they have not determined how the cocaine ended up in the backpack that Torres’ daughter took to school.

About midway through the morning school session, police and school administrators said, Torres’ daughter found the plastic bag containing the drug and the second-grader showed it to her friends when she joined them at a group of picnic tables in the schoolyard at the lunch recess.

“She starts passing it around, and there are nine students that either lick it or bite off a chunk of it,” Los Angeles Police Lt. William Gaida said.

Officials said there is no indication that any of the children, seven from the second grade and two from the fifth, knew what they were tasting. Second-grade teacher Carol Schieber said the children later told her they had several ideas about what it might have been, ranging from candy to medicine.

“They were curious,” Schieber said. “What they told me was that Torres’ daughter said, ‘This tastes good. Try some.’ ”

When Sacha took the bag containing the drugs away from the children and brought it to the school office, “We didn’t recognize it for what it was either,” Cloeter said.

The principal said he and other school personnel believed the substance was a chunk of clotted laundry soap, and “we threw it in a trash can.”

In the early afternoon, however, Torres came to the school and, in an agitated manner, entered her daughter’s classroom and began searching her daughter’s backpack, officials said. After Torres was told that the plastic bag had been taken to the office, police said, she went there and asked for an “Amway” product she had left in the bag.

“Stupidly, I guess, we gave it to her,” Cloeter said. “Then it came to us: ‘Why would she want to come back for some laundry detergent?’ ”

Cloeter called police, who examined a small piece of the substance that had been discarded in the schoolyard. It was determined to be cocaine, and the students were taken to the hospital as a precaution, authorities said.

“They came to our facility, and we evaluated them, and they didn’t require treatment,” Canoga Park Hospital administrator Barbara Meyers said.

Unaware that her daughter was at the hospital, Torres returned to the school to pick her up at 2:30 p.m. She was met there by police who arrested her and searched her car and later her home.

Police said the cocaine chunk was not found, but a substance used to cut cocaine, plastic bags and beepers were uncovered in the searches.

“We feel we can constructively show she had a large quantity of cocaine,” Gaida said. “It was definitely a life-threatening situation, and if any of these students had ingested more of it, we could have had a major problem.”

Torres’ attorney, Richard Walton, declined to comment on her latest arrest. A week earlier, a cocaine possession charge against Torres was dismissed because a police search that led to her arrest and the seizure of more than three pounds of the drug was ruled illegal, officials said.

In that case, Torres was arrested Feb. 24, 1987, after police watched her allegedly take a package of cocaine from a car in Woodland Hills.

The car was being watched because a day earlier, a nearby resident had flagged down patrol Officer Ken Knox and told him that he was a frequent viewer of “Miami Vice” and had seen a woman taking packages, similar to the cocaine packages shown on the show, from the car. Knox later opened the car’s door and found the drugs inside.

Walton successfully argued that the search was illegal because the “Miami Vice” watcher’s knowledge and suspicion was not sufficient “probable cause” to open the car.

“The Lord should save us from people who get their own notions of life on the streets from watching ‘Miami Vice,’ ” Walton’s motion to dismiss the case said.

The case was dismissed June 6.

A week later, when police were summoned to the Canoga Park Lutheran School, Knox received the call and later arrested Torres, police said.