Parents Arrested After Boy Found Chained to Post

The parents of four children were arrested Tuesday after a social services worker discovered that the couple had chained their 9-year-old boy to a post as a punishment, police said.

Guadencio Delgado Martinez, 31, and Irma Ventura, 28, were arrested at their home in the 200 block of South Walnut Avenue on suspicion of felony cruelty to a child, said Corinne Loomis, a spokeswoman for the Police Department.

Police went to the house about 3:15 p.m. after social worker Gloria Quaid stopped by there for a routine visit. Quaid had visited the family before because the family needed to learn parenting skills, Loomis said.

The couple’s other children, ages 7, 5 and 3, let Quaid in the house because Martinez, a day laborer, and Ventura, a restaurant worker, had not arrived home from work, Loomis said.

Police said the boy, whose name was not released, was sitting in a plastic chair in a bedroom and was chained around the ankle. The chain was locked on the other end to the clothes post in a closet, Loomis said.

The boy had apparently been in the chair for about 24 hours without food, water, bedding or bathroom facilities, authorities said. The boy was red and bruised on the face, neck and back, apparently due to being struck, police said.

The boy and his younger brother and sisters were taken to Orangewood Children’s Home in Orange, police said.

Ventura told police that they both had keys to the locked chain but did not say when they planned to release the child. The parents said they chained the boy at least once before to control his “incorrigible behavior,” Loomis said.