MONTROSE : Mother Enters Guilty Plea to Child Abuse

A Montrose woman pleaded guilty Wednesday to a charge that she abused her 1 1/2-year-old son who was found abandoned May 10 near Hollywood while the mother went to smoke rock cocaine, authorities said.

Tracy Ann Richards, 24, entered the plea at her preliminary hearing before Los Angeles Municipal Judge Stephen Marcus.

Richards, who could receive up to four years in state prison when sentenced by Marcus on Aug. 27, was facing two felony counts of child endangerment and child abuse. The child-endangerment charge was dropped as part of a plea bargain, Deputy Dist. Atty. Beatrice Donoghue said.

Police were alerted by a security guard who found then-14-month-old Timothy Richards standing outside alone in the 5400 block of Virginia Avenue. Officers searched the area for the boy’s mother, who was located three days later several blocks away near 3rd and Alvarado streets. A pipe she allegedly used to smoke cocaine was found in her sweater, said Detective Denise Evans of the Police Department’s Hollywood Division.

“Her first statement was she was there looking for the baby,” Evans said. Tracy Ann Richards then admitted to smoking rock cocaine on May 10 and May 13.

Richards acknowledges that she does have a drug problem, said her attorney, Richard A. Leonard.

“Her position has always been that she left the baby with somebody, and that she did go and smoke rock cocaine. . . . Apparently, the person she left the baby with did not watch the baby,” Leonard said.

That person has yet to be found, he said.

The boy has since been placed in the custody of his father. The father and mother had been living together but are not married, said Leonard, who is asking the court to send his client--who remains in custody in lieu of $100,000 bail--to a drug-rehabilitation prison.

“She loves the child. . . . She wants to get well and get rid of her drug problem so she can properly take care of her child,” he said.