Mother of Home-Alone Boy Blames Big Misunderstanding

The mother of a 4-year-old boy who dialed 911 after he got stuck in his Laguna Hills apartment Wednesday said a big misunderstanding led police to take her children to a shelter.

But investigators said Thursday there are too many unanswered questions to close the case, even though the children have been returned to the mother’s custody.

“You have to ask yourself, if a 4-year-old is left alone for an hour with no one looking for him and no one missing him, is someone really watching him?” Orange County Sheriff’s spokesman Jim Amormino said.

“We need to investigate what agreement was made. Who was supposed to be watching the child? We need to answer that question and then decide what, if any, charges will be filed,” Amormino said.

The mother, who agreed to talk to The Times if her name was not revealed, said she went to Oregon on Friday and left the boy in the care of a baby sitter who lives nearby.

According to accounts by police and the mother, the youngster left or was sent from the baby sitter’s apartment Wednesday morning to get his jacket from his apartment, which is around the corner at the large Prado complex.

No one was there, but the door was unlocked and he was able to get inside. When he tried to leave, the door apparently got jammed on a metal plate at the threshold and he could not open it.

That’s when he called 911 on one of the cell phones in the house and began an hourlong conversation with CHP dispatcher Dorothy Lopez, who kept him on the line until police could trace the call.

Several times during the conversation, the child said he had to get off the phone because its battery was getting low. “My mommy doesn’t want it dying,” he told Lopez.

Lopez kept him talking.

As his mother listened to a copy of the 911 tape, she said she was proud that her son stayed calm.

When Lopez first asked him which city he lived in, he said “California.” When she asked later, he answered correctly: “Laguna Hills.”

A friend and neighbor, who asked that her name not be used, said she saw police at the youngster’s door and went to investigate. The officers, the neighbor and the boy went to the baby sitter’s house.

“She said, ‘He was not in my care,’ ” the neighbor said. Sheriff’s deputies then took the boy and his 15-month-old sister, who was in day care at the time, to Orangewood Children’s Home in Orange.

When police spoke with the baby sitter again, she apparently told them she was taking care of the boy.

“She panicked,” the mother said. “She was afraid she was would get in trouble and lied.”