Mother of 5 Arrested After Infant Found Near Oxnard Canal

Police have arrested a mother of five on suspicion of child endangerment, saying she abandoned her 10-month-old son in a trash-strewn patch of shrubbery beside a south Oxnard drainage canal Saturday night.

Oxnard police placed the unharmed baby boy, Acension Melandez, into protective custody with a foster family, Lt. Jamie Skeeters said.

Jessica M. Chavez, the 25-year-old mother, was charged with felony child endangerment and released Sunday after posting $5,000 bond, Skeeters said. Chavez, who has four other children and is pregnant with her sixth child, is scheduled to be arraigned today or Tuesday, he said.

The baby was found about 8:45 p.m. Saturday in the 5500 block of South J Street by Michael Ramirez, who lives in the neighborhood.

Ramirez, 16, told The Times that he was riding his bicycle down J Street alongside the canal when heard the infant’s cries from the tall bushes between the street and the canal.

Ramirez stopped and spotted a blue stroller with the baby inside shoved into the shrubbery.

The youth said he ran home and called police, then returned to the bushes and pulled the stroller out to bring it back to his house, less than a block away.

“I thought somebody just left him there and was going to come back for him,” Ramirez said. “He must have been there a couple of hours. We brought him home; my sister changed his diapers.”

While some residents phoned police again to report the abandoned child, others set out in search of the mother, whom they believed they had spotted earlier near where the baby was found.

In fact, Chavez was waiting within sight of the baby, said Annie Salazar, manager of the apartment complex across the street from the site.

“Maybe she was watching to see who took the baby,” Salazar said. “She said, ‘What’s happening? What are you guys looking for?’ I said, ‘If I find that lady, I’m gonna rip her apart.’ ”

Salazar said she struck up a conversation with Chavez, asking how many children she had. Chavez, tight-lipped and arms folded, answered that she had none, then said, “I’ll be right back,” Salazar said.

Chavez then walked into the nearby Bullring Bar and the neighbors, suspecting her, followed, Salazar said. Bar patrons ordered the neighbors to leave. Chavez eventually re-emerged and was taken into custody by police, Salazar said.

“All of us here, we’re mothers; we have kids,” said Juanita Salazar, another neighbor unrelated to Annie Salazar. “We spank them once in a while, but I’d never think about throwing them away. Why didn’t she tell us, ‘Take care of my child’? We would have done it.”