Answers Sought in Boy’s Death

Officials vowed Wednesday to find out why a Los Angeles woman was allowed to keep custody of her baby boy even though social workers knew she had been convicted of child abuse in a case 10 years ago in which two children were severely burned.

The probe comes as Latunga Nate Stark, 32, was charged with murder and arson for allegedly putting her 3-month-old son, Michael Kelvin Thompson, in a washing machine before setting their South Los Angeles residence on fire late Monday.

“We have to find out how in the world she slipped through the cracks, and how something like this could happen,” said County Supervisor Yvonne Brathwaite Burke. “Certainly we’re inquiring of children’s services, and everyone else, as to how something like this could happen with someone who they knew had problems.”

After firefighters put out the blaze, they found Michael dead inside the washer, its door open, in a bedroom he shared with his mother. Relatives said Stark stood on the front stoop smoking a cigarette as firefighters searched for her infant.

County Department of Children and Family Services officials, citing confidentiality rules, declined to confirm whether they had been monitoring the baby or his mother. Spokeswoman Susan Riskin said the department was starting “a death review.”

“We have a tragedy before us, and if it is connected to this department, we will investigate,” she said.

The baby’s paternal relatives said Stark called a county social worker hours before the fire and asked the official to come get Michael, because she had been quarreling with the baby’s father, Michael Thompson.

But Stark called the social worker back an hour later to cancel her request, said relatives who were at the house at the time. Stark lived there with the baby’s grandmother, Althea Andrews, and another relative.

Andrews said Wednesday that the social worker called that same day to ask her whether she thought county officials should come to the house.

Andrews, 66, said she told the social worker things were under control and no immediate intervention was needed.

“From what I could see, everything was fine. [Stark] was OK. She was playing with the baby,” Andrews said.

“If I’d have known she was going to kill the baby and set fire to my house, I’d have called the police to take her away. I wouldn’t have waited for the social worker.”

Andrews said the first time county social workers contacted the family was a few days after Michael was born Oct. 9.

They set up a meeting Nov. 1 at a county office in South Los Angeles that was attended by several family members as well as social workers with the South Central Los Angeles Regional Center Inc. The private nonprofit organization provides services to people with developmental disabilities, and Stark had been a client for some time. Stark did not attend the meeting, relatives said.

Andrews said the social workers told them that they didn’t have a place for Stark and her baby to stay together so they’d have to split them up, with Michael going into foster care.

“I didn’t care if they were split up, but I didn’t want the baby to go to the system,” Andrews said Wednesday.

So social workers proposed that Stark and Michael live with Andrews until a permanent home could be found for them, she said.

Stark was convicted of one count of child abuse in a 1994 case. Prosecutors alleged she set her Alabama Street apartment’s carpeting and drapes on fire with a burning mop, then used it to ignite her 6-month-old daughter’s diaper and the pajamas of a 2-year-old neighbor boy, who spent two weeks in a hospital with burns to his back.

Stark had been charged in that case with two counts of attempted murder and arson of an inhabited building causing great bodily harm. But court records show that those charges were dismissed in return for her pleading no contest to the one child-abuse count. She served an eight-year prison term. Both children suffered serious burns, and Stark’s daughter was taken from her.

Stark was later convicted of assault with a deadly weapon and charged in a separate case with arson. The district attorney’s office said they could not prosecute the arson case after the court found she was not competent to stand trial. Instead, she was sent to a mental facility.

Stark eventually began receiving services from the South Central Los Angeles Regional Center.

Center spokeswoman Marsha D. Mitchell said her organization would have known about Stark’s past criminal record but that social workers with her agency saw no evidence that Stark might hurt Michael.

“If her caseworker would have been contacted, and the family was saying, ‘We think she might hurt this child,’ we would have contacted her case worker in [children’s services],” said Mitchell.

Keeping families intact and children out of foster care has been a mandate as the county, which handles 32,000 children in the system, is trying to develop guidelines on child abuse and neglect aimed at ensuring that public and private agencies exchange information about risks.

The coroner said more tests were needed to determine whether Michael perished in the fire or was killed earlier.

The family said police told them he appeared to have been beaten.

Times staff writers Richard Winton, Wendy Thermos, Jack Leonard and Carla Rivera contributed to this report.