Little Life Lost : A Pastor Alone Attends the Funeral of an Abandoned Newborn

The minister raised his voice over the noise of nearby freeway traffic Tuesday at the funeral of a baby boy whose body was found two weeks ago at the bottom of a portable outdoor toilet.

“Maybe, because of what has happened to you, we will all be able to love a little more,” said Bob Brown, a pastor at the Universal Church of Los Angeles.

But there was no one to hear him. There were only four empty folding chairs beside the grave of the child known only as “Baby Boy Sanchez.”

After the brief ceremony, tears welled in Brown’s eyes as he talked about the grisly circumstances surrounding the baby’s death.

“How in the hell can someone do something like this?” he asked.

It is a question that also baffles investigators, who believe that the baby’s mother fled to Mexico after giving birth in the toilet near a Saticoy onion field. They believe she dropped the newborn into chemicals and fecal material inside the toilet.

The county coroner’s office ruled that the baby died after inhaling the human waste.

Ventura County sheriff’s deputies declined to identify the mother, except to say she is a Mexican transient in her early 20s. But mortuary officials said the mother was identified in the death certificate as Francisca Sanchez of Oxnard.

Because the baby had no other known relatives in the area, the county public administrator’s office paid for an unmarked grave in the children’s section of Ivy Lawn Memorial Park in Ventura.

The infant was buried in a $98 casket. His grave will be marked only as Lot 73, Grave Site 27.

Brown agreed to perform the rites at the request of the funeral director who was hired to bury the baby.

“Just because the mom dumped it, there is no reason that it should just be dumped into a grave without a service,” said Otto Schimmel, managing director of Guardian Memorial Services in Oxnard.

Before the service, a secretary at the cemetery placed half a dozen roses in a glass vase at the head of the grave. Brown laid a single red rose atop the tiny white casket. No one else came to pay respects.

Brown described the infant as a special and precious baby. “Baby boy Sanchez, don’t for one minute think that you have been abandoned, because you haven’t,” he said. “You were created by God, you were taken by God and you are truly, truly loved by God.”

Brown said he routinely conducts free funeral services for the poor and homeless in Ventura County.

Sheriff’s investigators are treating the death as a homicide, since the coroner’s investigation determined that the baby was alive at birth.

The body was found early in the morning on July 30 by a worker who cleans and pumps the chemical toilets used by field laborers.

Lt. Joe Harwell said investigators discovered the identity of the mother through co-workers and acquaintances.

Workers told investigators that the woman had complained of being sick before she entered the toilet, Harwell said.

Sheriff’s investigators believe that the woman is the same person who tried to abandon a newborn child in Oxnard in May, 1990. In that incident, the baby survived.

Officials at the county Public Social Services Agency refused to offer further information, saying they are forbidden to release details of child-abuse cases. Harwell said the woman may have fled to Mexico.

U.S. Border Patrol and other law enforcement officials in Southern California are looking for the woman.