Valley Mother Charged Over Car Accident

The Los Angeles city attorney filed child endangerment charges Tuesday against a North Hollywood woman whose 2-year-old son knocked her idling car into gear on July 30, causing it to run over five children playing in the driveway.

Disputing the account given by Estela Lopez, 33, who said that the boy climbed into the car on his own, city attorneys reported that they have two witnesses who will testify that Lopez left 2-year-old Osvaldo alone in the idling car.

Lopez, a mother of three, was charged with two counts of child endangerment in a complaint the city attorney’s office filed in Van Nuys Municipal Court. She was advised by letter to appear for arraignment on Aug. 30, Deputy City Atty. Richard Schmidt said.

If convicted, she could be sentenced to up to a year in jail and fined up to $1,000.

Although four of the children, between 5 and 10 years old, were hospitalized in serious or critical condition immediately after the accident, none suffered permanent injuries. All have since been released.

In the days following the incident in the 6800 block of Agnes Avenue in North Hollywood, police and the district attorney’s office declined to seek charges, saying the incident was a terrible tragedy that did not merit criminal action. Officers said they accepted Lopez’s explanation for the incident, that she had left the car running while she ran into the house to retrieve her purse and that the boy climbed into the car on his own and accidentally moved the shift lever into drive.

Schmidt said attorneys later decided to file charges because the children’s injuries were serious and because several witnesses said Lopez had left the child unattended inside the car with the engine running.

“The 2-year-old was left alone in the car,” Schmidt said. “There is no evidence the emergency brake was engaged. The child, based on what our witnesses say, was not strapped into a car seat or seat belt. Nothing was done to keep him from running around in the vehicle.”

Schmidt said two witnesses, including a 9-year-old girl who was struck and received broken ribs, stated they saw Lopez put her son in the idling car, close the door, then go inside her apartment.

The girl, Schmidt said, told police that the toddler’s head “seemed to disappear very quickly and the next thing she knew, the car was lurching forward.”

Lopez, who said she was unaware of the charges filed against her, reiterated Tuesday in a telephone interview with The Times that she did not leave the boy in the car.

“It was a matter of 10 seconds,” Lopez said. “I started the car for my husband, remembered that I forgot my purse, ran inside, and returned to see the car moving toward the children. The car door was closed. I never knew he could open it by himself.”

Once inside the car, Lopez said, the boy tripped the automatic locks on the 1984 Thunderbird. Unable to get inside the moving vehicle, Lopez said she pulled on the rear bumper in a futile attempt to slow it down, yelling a warning to the five unsuspecting children as it bore down on them.

The children--four girls ages 5 through 10, and a boy, 7--were playing on a sofa in the apartment complex driveway, police said. The car pushed the sofa about 20 feet up the driveway and pinned it against the wall, trapping some of the children beneath the car.

The boy and two of the girls, ages 6 and 10, are Lopez’s nephew and nieces, Schmidt said.

Lopez, who does not have a driver’s license, said she was warming up the car engine for her husband, while the family prepared for a trip to McDonald’s for breakfast.

On Friday, the district attorney’s office declined to file felony charges against Lopez, saying she left the boy alone very briefly, was remorseful and had no prior criminal record.

“She could have been looking at six years in state prison, and we felt her actions were more appropriately prosecuted as misdemeanors,” Deputy Dist. Atty. David Mintz said.

Misdemeanor cases are prosecuted by the city attorney, and felonies by the district attorney.

The more serious of the two child-endangerment charges filed Tuesday against Lopez involves placing a child in a situation “likely to cause great bodily injury or death,” Schmidt said.

O’Neill is a staff writer and Olivo is a special correspondent. Times staff writer Abigail Goldman also contributed to this report.