Strong-Willed Infant Was No Match for Chaos on the Streets : Crime: Jainah Spencer survived a hole in her heart. But a kidnaping led to the 7-month-old’s death in a car crash.

Everyone pegged Jainah Alexis Spencer as a survivor.

She was born last year with a hole in her heart that doctors warned could prove deadly, and her family figured if she could survive her first few months, the bubbly little girl with boundless energy could survive anything.

But even 7-month-old Jainah, with such a strong will to live, could not survive when the chaos and violence of Los Angeles street gangs invaded her mother’s apartment in February.

Now family members struggle to explain why an innocent baby sleeping soundly in her Mickey Mouse pajamas was killed after six suspected gang members kidnaped her for collateral and crashed their car while driving 95 m.p.h.

After Jainah was born, her mother, Sonja Spencer, spent many sleepless nights clutching the little girl in her arms, monitoring the infant’s breathing to ensure she was OK. As the months passed and the bond with her daughter strengthened, Spencer delighted in her baby’s growth.

Jainah learned how to scoot around the apartment in her walker. Her first few teeth were just beginning to show, and she had recently learned how to say “Mama.”

But all that’s gone now.

Jainah is buried under a shady tree in the corner of the Inglewood Park Cemetery in a grassy area reserved for children called the “Garden of the Little Lambs.”

On the night of Feb. 21, Jainah, her brother and one of her two sisters had just been tucked into bed when Spencer’s ex-boyfriend, Robert Lewis Davis, 29, walked into her Inglewood apartment with four men she had never seen.

A total of six men, suspected members of the Athens Park Blood gang, had carjacked Davis earlier in the evening demanding money, police said. Because he had none, they ordered him to take them to his ex-girlfriend’s house to search for money. Davis, who is not a gang member, knew the men because they lived in the same neighborhood, police said.

Spencer was terrified when the strangers began ransacking her apartment--opening drawers and cupboards and throwing their contents onto the floor. A man holding a gun ordered her to get down on her knees, she said.

“He said not to call the police or they would come back and kill everyone in the house,” she said.

The men found little of value in Spencer’s apartment, she said. To her horror, they began to discuss taking someone hostage. They planned to drive to Davis’ mother’s house in Lancaster to search for money.

One of the men ordered Spencer to prepare a baby bottle. As she prepared the formula in the kitchen, she hoped desperately they would not take one of her children.

“I was hoping they would take me,” she said.

But one of the men grabbed Jainah and, in a swirl of activity, they left, taking the baby and Davis with them.

Frantic, Spencer wondered what to do. If she called the police, she feared Jainah might get hurt. Soon, she called Davis’ mother to warn her. Then Spencer called police.

A relative came and took Spencer’s three other children to the Los Angeles house of Spencer’s mother. Spencer waited in her apartment, “hoping they would drive up and everything would be OK,” she said.

Meanwhile, her mother, Kassandra, gathered with the children, held their hands and prayed. “I said, ‘We’ll sit here and hold hands and pray for Jainah and everything will be OK,’ ” recalled Kassandra, who asked that her last name not be used.

As the hours passed, the children cried frantically. Kassandra tried to ease the tension with a joke, but nothing worked.

Then, at about 4 a.m. came the horrible news.

While Davis and two men went inside his mother’s house searching for money, the four other men and Jainah were waiting in a 1984 Chevrolet Caprice when one of the men spotted an unmarked police car.

When a couple of black-and-whites pulled up, a 10-mile chase ensued.

The Chevrolet was racing at about 95 m.p.h. with its headlights off when the driver lost control, slamming the sedan into a tree. As flames engulfed the vehicle, police pulled Jainah and the four men from the car and rushed the girl to the hospital.

One man suffered only minor bruises. The three others suffered broken bones. Jainah was pronounced dead minutes later from head injuries.

“I couldn’t believe it,” Spencer said. “I just couldn’t believe it. Never did I imagine anything like that would happen.”

Police arrested four Los Angeles men, all suspected gang members, in connection with the kidnaping: Kenyon Pitts, 20; Herman St. Aimie, 29; Wadrick Bouligne, 28, and Marcel Cloud, 29. All four face murder, kidnaping and robbery charges in the case.

Two Los Angeles men who police say fled the house, leaving Davis and his mother unharmed, are still at large: Cephus Earl Sudduth, 24, and Ronald Earl Cains, 22. Both are suspected gang members.

Jainah’s death has left a gaping hole in Spencer’s family.

A month after the death, Jainah’s 9-year-old sister, Jenise, frequently asks her grandmother how her sister could have been killed after they prayed. “I don’t know what to say,” Kassandra said. “I excuse myself and go into the bathroom and cry, then I come back and say there are some things I just can’t explain.”

Meanwhile, with two suspects still loose, Spencer is frightened.

“I find myself looking over my shoulder constantly,” she says. “Everywhere I turn I see someone who looks just like one of them. You think you should feel safe at home, but I don’t have that anymore.”