Pair held in child endangerment
A woman having sex Monday didn’t notice that her shower curtain had caught fire, having disabled her apartment’s smoke alarm to smoke methamphetamine, which she stored in an adjacent room where a baby was sleeping, authorities said.
Susan Ruth Charnitski, 43, was arrested on suspicion of drug possession and child endangerment, said Orange County Sheriff’s Sgt. Nancy Gafner.
A candle in the bathroom ignited the plastic curtain, Gafner said, triggering a sprinkler in the building in the 1000 block of Calle Del Cerro.
Charnitski’s companion, John Riley, 37, the father of the year-old boy, was arrested on suspicion of child endangerment, Gafner said.
Charnitski is not related to the boy, who is now in his mother’s custody.
Deputies did not find evidence that Charnitski or Riley had used methamphetamine that day.
-- Susannah Rosenblatt
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