Compton woman charged with attempted murder after abandoned baby is found in crevice
The newborn was cold to the touch by the time a Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputy pulled her from a crevice in Compton. There was no one near the bike path where the 4-day-old girl had been abandoned, almost no way to explain how the crying child wound up buried under slabs of asphalt.
The only clue: A hospital blanket wrapped around the child’s tiny frame.
Although the discovery of a piece of cloth might seem insignificant, the lead was credited Monday with helping investigators make an unusually fast identification in an abandoned baby case.
Prosecutors charged Porche Laronda Washington, 33, with attempted murder and child abuse, accusing her of leaving the baby near a Compton riverbed Nov. 27. Washington, of Compton, pleaded not guilty.
A combination of the hospital blanket and tips from the public helped investigators identify Washington as the child’s mother in less than a week, but officials said it was rare for detectives to quickly track down parents who abandon newborns.
“If the child isn’t born in a hospital … then it becomes a little bit more difficult,” said Capt. Carlos Marquez, head of the Sheriff’s Department’s Special Victims Bureau. “Then we have nothing to go on other than a lead from the public.”
The number of child abandonments in the county has declined in recent years, but in the cases that do occur, the path from the discovery of an infant to the arrest of a parent can often be a frustrating one. This year, a woman spent several days in jail after she was wrongly identified as the mother of a baby left in a stroller in South Los Angeles.
Detectives frequently have to rely on a relative or friend of the mother who decides to step forward after the child’s face is plastered across news broadcasts and websites.
“The public has a big influence,” Marquez said. “Somebody knows somebody who was pregnant and is no longer, and now there’s no ... baby around.”
Those kinds of calls from concerned citizens were crucial in helping police track down Washington, sheriff’s officials said. Though the recovery of the blanket told investigators the child had been born in a hospital, calls from the public helped narrow down the list of area hospitals to check, Marquez said. He and other sheriff’s officials declined to say exactly what tips led them to Washington or where she delivered the child.
Washington gave birth at an area hospital Nov. 23, according to sheriff’s officials. She was released from the hospital three days later, on Thanksgiving. Investigators believe she abandoned the child the following morning.
A few days later, detectives were able to identify Washington through hospital records, and she was arrested in Compton on Thursday. Washington told police that she hid the pregnancy from her friends and family and panicked after giving birth, sheriff’s officials said.
“Basically she was stressed. She did not want to deliver the baby at first,” said Sgt. Richard Ruiz of the Special Victims Bureau. “She was afraid.”
Ruiz would not say whether the child’s father knew of the pregnancy, and he declined to say what else Washington might have told investigators. If convicted, she faces a maximum sentence of life in prison.
Law enforcement experts say child abandonment cases are notoriously challenging to solve. The babies are usually born in remote settings, and the mothers often hide their pregnancies from loved ones who might be able to aid detectives.
“A lot of times what you find is either a woman who didn’t know she was pregnant or a young girl who hid it from everybody all along, and they [give birth] at home or a friend’s house or in the woods,” said Hermann Walz, a former New York City prosecutor who teaches at the John Jay School of Criminal Justice. “It’s almost always some covert birth.”
Without hospital records, detectives have a harder time determining when a child was born, and covert births limit the number of potential witnesses, Marquez said.
As a result, detectives often turn to the public for help. In 2006, sheriff’s deputies arrested the parents of a newborn girl found dead in a trash bin outside a Santa Clarita mobile home after a neighbor responded to pleas for assistance by providing information about suspicious activity in the area.
But the tips aren’t always right.
In August, Los Angeles Police Department detectives began looking for the mother of an infant found in a stroller in South L.A. The baby was a day old, his umbilical cord still attached.
Four days later, detectives arrested a woman they identified as the boy’s mother. Belen Ramirez, 20, was booked on suspicion of child endangerment.
LAPD Det. Tonja Miller, who oversees major assault cases in the department’s Southwest Division, said police began looking at Ramirez after one of her relatives called a Spanish media outlet and said Ramirez could be the boy’s mother. An eyewitness identified Ramirez as being at the scene where the baby was found around the time he was left, Miller said.
Ramirez spent three days in jail before she was released. She offered to show them medical paperwork proving she hadn’t been pregnant, according to her attorney, Trevor Finneman. At one point, he said, police swabbed Ramirez’s cheek for DNA.
It wasn’t until Sept. 30 — eight weeks after Ramirez was arrested — that she was told she was no longer a person of interest in the case, Finneman said. The DNA test showed she wasn’t the boy’s mother.
“She knew she was innocent the entire time. She’s still coming to terms with what happened,” Finneman said. “It’s been a traumatizing experience for her.”
LAPD officials were stunned by the DNA results.
“We were never concerned that she was not the right suspect prior to the DNA results,” Miller said. “We were actually very shocked.”
Finneman said he plans to sue the city over Ramirez’s arrest, alleging that police didn’t provide adequate sign-language interpretation for his client, who is deaf.
As of last week, the case remained unsolved.
The number of children abandoned in Los Angeles County has fallen in recent years partly because of initiatives like the county’s Safe Surrender program, which allows mothers to turn their babies over to authorities at a hospital or fire station within 72 hours of delivery without fear of criminal penalties.
From 2004 to 2006, 20 children were abandoned in L.A. County, and 17 of them died, said Deanne Tilton Durfee, executive director of the Interagency Council on Child Abuse and Neglect. This year, four children have been abandoned. All survived.
Sixteen other newborns were turned over at Safe Surrender locations, Durfee said.
“For the most part, these are the babies who are born in alleys and backrooms. They are the dumpster babies of old, of another era, and that’s diminishing,” she said. “That’s the joyful part of this program.”
Twitter: @JamesQueallyLAT
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