Child Abuse Death Toll Continues to Rise in High Desert : Crime: Seven such homicides have been confirmed since mid-1991, the latest a 6-month-old girl. The total is more than three times the county rate.

The number of child abuse deaths in the Antelope Valley--running three times the county average--rose again Wednesday, as the coroner’s office confirmed the seventh such homicide since mid-1991 and sheriff’s deputies began investigating a potential eighth case.

The Los Angeles County coroner’s office concluded that 6-month-old Karanina Hernandez of Lancaster died July 12 of a brain injury caused by violent shaking. The infant’s mother and her spouse are under investigation by sheriff’s deputies, but no charges have been brought against them.

Sheriff’s homicide detectives also are investigating the death Saturday of 14-month-old Nathan C. Aguilar, who had been taken from his family in a remote area east of Lancaster because of suspected child abuse in March but then returned to them two days later, deputies said.

The two cases are the latest additions to a growing list of confirmed or suspected child abuse deaths in the Antelope Valley. Experts on child abuse have blamed stress caused by the recession, drug use by parents, isolation and other factors for the problems.

The Antelope Valley had 6,347 children reported abused in the fiscal year ending in mid-1992, about 50% above the county’s average for the area’s population. Also, the region’s seven confirmed child abuse homicides are more than three times the county’s annual, population-adjusted rate.

In an article last month, The Times reported details of the then-six child abuse homicides in the Antelope Valley, examining problems in the area’s child abuse services and noting that use of the drug methamphetamine by parents or guardians was involved in at least five of those cases.

A Sheriff’s Department spokeswoman, Deputy Angie McLaughlin, said the Aguilar child, who had a history of seizures, died at home Saturday with no external evidence of foul play. The coroner’s office conducted an autopsy, but the cause of death has not been determined, pending further tests.

Deputy John Mayfield of the sheriff’s child abuse unit in the Antelope Valley said, however, that he and the county Children’s Services Department had taken the same child from his parents in March after the infant suffered a fractured skull and other injuries.

Authorities doubted the parents’ claim that the boy suffered the injuries falling from a low bed onto a carpeted floor. But the child was returned home two days later by an official at the county’s MacLaren Children’s Center over the objections of Mayfield and the child’s case worker, Mayfield said.

“We were pretty upset about it and made a lot of phone calls. But it didn’t do any good,” Mayfield said Wednesday. The explanation for the boy’s return was that a doctor who initially considered the child’s injuries suspicious later said they might have occurred previously, Mayfield said.

In the Hernandez case, meanwhile, Sheriff’s Homicide Detective Clemente Bonilla said a decision is pending on whether to seek criminal charges against the girl’s mother, Kathleen Kitchens, or her husband, Pete Alvarez.

The day the Hernandez infant died, she was staying with a baby-sitter while Kitchens was at work. Shortly after the baby-sitter’s mother returned the child to Alvarez, the infant developed breathing problems and was taken to a hospital. The child later died at UCLA Medical Center.

Bonilla said there is no indication of methamphetamine use by the couple or prior problems with alleged child abuse in the family. But the couple are fighting to regain custody of a young son who was taken from them by authorities after his sister’s death, Bonilla said.