Boyfriend of Teen-Age Mother Held in Infant’s Death

The former live-in lover of a teen-age girl was arrested early Wednesday on suspicion that he murdered her 3-month-old daughter last year at their Trabuco Canyon home, sheriff’s deputies reported.

Raymond Owen Bonner, 34, now of Orange, was arrested about 1:30 a.m., immediately after lengthy questioning by homicide investigators, Sheriff’s Lt. Richard J. Olson said.

Bonner, who is being held in lieu of $250,000 bail in Orange County Jail, is suspected of killing Ashley June Perkins on Nov. 29 at their home in the 20700 block of Trabuco Oaks Drive.

Olson and the district attorney’s office declined to discuss specifics of the investigation or how the infant might have been killed. But coroner’s officials said an autopsy showed that parts of the child’s body were bruised and that she died of asphyxiation.

“This is not the first case of its type in the county,” said Deputy Dist. Atty. Bernadette Cemore, the prosecutor. “But it is always especially tragic when you see such a young baby involved.”

Cemore filed one count of murder Wednesday afternoon against Bonner in South Orange County Municipal Court in Laguna Niguel. He is scheduled to be arraigned today.

The day that Ashley died, her mother, Sheri L. Perkins, 16, called paramedics from a pay telephone near her house and said her daughter had stopped breathing. When authorities arrived, Bonner apparently told them that he had administered cardiopulmonary resuscitation on the unconscious infant, to no avail.

Ashley was pronounced dead at Saddleback Memorial Medical Center in Laguna Hills at 9:55 a.m., sheriff’s deputies said.

“We don’t really know what happened,” Bonner told The Times Orange County shortly after Ashley’s death. “She had been having an indigestion problem, you know, with some very hard burping.”

Bonner, who no longer lives with Perkins, also said that the morning the child died, she had been “grunting hard” and seemed to be constipated.

Perkins, who is not a suspect in the case, declined to comment. The Sheriff’s Department would not say whether Bonner is the child’s father.

Olson said authorities suspected wrongdoing when the autopsy revealed bruises on the baby.

Bonner was finally identified as the prime suspect after extensive interviewing of acquaintances and leads in California and other states, he said.

Tuesday evening, Bonner was invited to Sheriff’s Department headquarters in Santa Ana for further questioning, then arrested. Olson declined to elaborate on what Bonner said during the interview.