Police Saturday arrested the 20-year-old mother of a newborn boy who was found Tuesday — with his umbilical cord still attached — in a stroller near a church in South Los Angeles.
Long Beach resident Belen Ramirez was arrested at 12:30 a.m. by officers from the Los Angeles Police Department’s Southwest station, according to Officer Mike Lopez of the LAPD’s Media Relations Section.
Ramirez was booked at 2:22 a.m. on a charge of child endangerment and was being held in lieu of $100,000 bail, Lopez said.
Police were sent to Vermont Avenue and Dana Street shortly before 1 p.m. Tuesday on a call from a witness, said LAPD Officer Drake Madison. Paramedics took the child to a hospital, where he was reported in good condition, he said.
ABC7 reported that some residents had spotted the stroller at the same location Monday night, but assumed it was empty and had been discarded.
Later, KCAL9 ran an interview with Alex Diaz, who first saw the baby stroller Monday night, ignored it, and then when he saw it the next day, found the baby.
Diaz told the station that the first time he saw the stroller, he thought it was abandoned. “The stroller was real dirty,” he said. But the next day, he walked up to the stroller, “pulled the blanket down, and found a baby’s head. I thought he was dead. He wasn’t moving. He wasn’t making any noise at all.” Diaz said he moved the stroller to the shade of a nearby tree “and as soon as I touched him, he started moving and crying.”
Madison noted that under the county’s “Safe Surrender” law, which was enacted in 2001, a parent or guardian is allowed to surrender an infant who is no more than three days old without repercussions, as long as the baby shows no sign of abuse.
—City News Service