CHP Urges Manslaughter Charge Under Car-Seat Law : Crash: The child had been sitting on her father’s lap. State officials recall no such prosecutions since the statute was adopted.

In what could be the first prosecution under a California law mandating that children younger than 4 be restrained in special car seats, the California Highway Patrol recommended Friday that manslaughter and child-endangerment charges be filed in the death of a 22-month-old girl on the Ventura Freeway in Oxnard.

Melissa Perez died the evening of Sept. 2 when, according to the CHP, a car carrying seven people overturned on the Ventura Freeway just north of Santa Clara Avenue.

Melissa died when the car, driven by her mother, Telma Ochaita of Canoga Park, overturned on the freeway’s shoulder after moving from the middle lane to the right lane, the CHP said. Ochaita appeared to be obeying the 55-m.p.h. speed limit, authorities said.

The infant was seated on the lap of her father, Oscar Perez, 31, of Canoga Park, and was thrown through the open sunroof of the 1985 Toyota Corolla, according to the CHP and a report by the Ventura County coroner’s office.

Neither the driver nor the other passengers were seriously injured, according to the CHP.

According to the coroner’s office, “the victim was . . . pinned under the vehicle” and the cause of death was “traumatic head injuries.”

CHP spokesman Jim Utter said an 11-page investigative report, completed this week, recommended that the Ventura County district attorney’s office should file vehicular manslaughter and child endangerment charges.

The prosecutor’s office is expected to begin reviewing the CHP’s recommendations next week.

Penalties for conviction on these charges range from a year in the county jail to as much as six years in prison, depending on whether they are filed as misdemeanors or felonies.

Officials with the state attorney general’s office, the CHP and the Department of Motor Vehicles said they knew of no prosecutions under the law, which went into effect in January, 1983.

Last May in Miami, a Dade County judge acquitted a Nicaraguan immigrant prosecuted under a similar law. That trial was believed to be the first in the country based on the violation of a vehicle law requiring that special child-restraint seats be used for infants riding in passenger vehicles.

A Los Angeles County prosecutor filed similar manslaughter charges in September, 1990, after an auto accident in Newhall in which an infant was killed, but charges were subsequently dropped.

Don Grant, one of Ventura County’s senior deputy district attorneys who screens felony recommendations, said he knew of no court trials in the state based on the 1983 law.

“It’s rare,” he said.

Until he had a chance to study the CHP’s report, he said, it was unclear whether charges--if they are filed--would be against the mother, the father, or both.

Assistant Atty. Gen. Pete Holland, who supervises enforcement of the state’s health, education and welfare code, also said he had heard of no prosecutions under the state’s infant-seat law.

Moreover, he said he felt it would be a very difficult case to prosecute.

“The jury would say, ‘There but for the grace of God go I,’ ” he speculated.

The infant’s parents could not be immediately reached for comment.