Ventura : Headstone Placed on Infant’s Grave

A marker was installed Thursday on the grave of an infant whose body was found last month at the bottom of a portable outdoor toilet.

The marker for the infant, known only as Baby Boy Sanchez, was paid for by two Ventura County residents who read about the baby’s burial in an unmarked grave site at Ivy Lawn Memorial Park in Ventura.

Investigators believe that the mother gave birth in the toilet near an onion field in Saticoy and then dropped the infant into the chemicals and fecal material at the bottom of the toilet.

Sheriff’s deputies have not located the mother, whom cemetery officials identified as Francisca Sanchez of Oxnard.

Ed and Mary Arnesen of Ventura and a Simi Valley resident who asked to remain anonymous called the cemetery and offered to pay for the $443 stone.

“It was a very sad thing that a mother would be driven to do such a thing,” Mary Arnesen said.

The marker was engraved with the words that Pastor Bob Brown of the Universal Church of Los Angeles spoke at the infant’s funeral: “You were created by God, you were taken by God and you are truly, truly loved by God.” It also included the date of the baby’s birth and death: July 28, 1991.

On Thursday, Brown watched as a cemetery worker placed the marker on the infant’s grave. “The death of this one baby touched so many people,” he said.