Toddler Found in Motel Room With Corpse

The badly decomposed body of a woman was discovered in an Anaheim motel room Wednesday along with an abandoned toddler who appears to have been her child.

“The child is in good health,” Anaheim Police Sgt. Joe Vargas said. The toddler is a 2- to 3-year-old boy, who was with the woman and a man when they checked in a week ago, witnesses said.

Police placed the boy in protective custody at Orangewood Children’s Home.

A maintenance man made the grim discovery shortly before 5 p.m. after noticing a foul smell coming from Room 235 of the Arena Inn and Suites on Katella Avenue near Haster Street, a few blocks from Disneyland.

Witnesses said that when the boy was carried from the room he kept saying, “I couldn’t wake up my mother.”

The woman was seated on the floor with what appeared to be blood on her head, a witness said. Another said the child was cowering in the corner when a neighbor entered the room.

“I ran in there, grabbed the kid and ran him out,” said Earley Baskin, who was there ahead of police. “The scene was horrendous. I can still smell that on my clothes--I’ll never get rid of the smell.”

Police found the body of the woman “in advanced stages of decomposition” along with the toddler who “apparently had been left alone with . . . the victim,” Vargas said.

Police could not identify the woman, nor would they discuss the possible cause of her death.

“We believe we know who was registered to the room,” he said, “but we can’t be positive and don’t want to speculate. At this point we don’t know whether we have a homicide, overdose or death by natural causes.”

He also could not say how long the woman had been dead.

A desk clerk at the motel also declined to identify the woman but said that she had checked in with a man and the toddler on July 1, paying $161 in cash for a week’s rent. The couple, he said, had arrived in a car and appeared to be local.

Neighbors said the man was driving a 1998 gold Chevy truck. He left on Sunday and hasn’t been seen since.