Baby Allegedly Is Traded for Drugs; 3 Jailed

A Yucaipa woman who allegedly traded her 6-month-old baby for narcotics is facing felony conspiracy and child-endangerment charges after police found the baby abandoned in a park restroom, authorities said Saturday.

Brenda Haralson, 19, and her boyfriend, Kevin O’Hare, 28, were arrested Friday, three days after they reported 6-month-old Kayla Renee Hicks kidnaped, San Bernardino County sheriff’s investigators said. The baby and her 2-year-old brother are now in protective custody, investigators told reporters.

“Evidently, they were trading the baby for drugs,” a sheriff’s official said. Haralson “ended up reporting the baby missing when, in fact, it wasn’t. . . . The kidnaping was unfounded.”

Haralson, who is suspected of inventing the story to account for the baby’s disappearance, apparently used the infant as collateral to buy $50 to $100 worth of methamphetamines, said Sheriff’s Detective Lee Hamblin.

According to investigators, the deal involved a Yucaipa woman named Linda Riebling, 39, who accepted the baby in exchange for the drugs and later became frightened, abandoning the baby Thursday night on the floor of a park restroom. Police recovered the infant after being alerted by a passerby who found her.

Under questioning, authorities said, Haralson admitted that she and her boyfriend had agreed to the deal. Haralson talked of trying to get the baby back in late July or early August, when she had enough money, Hamblin said.

Both Haralson and O’Hare were booked on suspicion of conspiracy and child endangerment, sheriff’s officials said. Riebling was booked on a felony charge of child endangerment. All were being held at the San Bernardino County Central Jail on $10,000 bail, investigators said.