A woman believed to be the mother of an uncommunicative boy left alone at Union Station on Independence Day remained jailed Friday on suspicion of felony child endangerment.
Dava Webster, 31, was arrested late Thursday afternoon when she returned to the transit depot, a Los Angeles Police Department spokesman said. She is being held on $100,000 bail.
Spurred by all the publicity that surrounded the child’s Wednesday night discovery, someone stepped forward Thursday and identified the boy, who was subsequently reunited with relatives, police said.
The boy was initially believed to be deaf and possibly autistic, and his inability to communicate hampered the investigation into how he ended up unattended and who had left him at the station, according to LAPD Sgt. Hector Guzman.
An American Sign Language interpreter was summoned to try to communicate with the boy, who is 7 years old, but was unsuccessful, the sergeant said.
A witness told reporters she had seen the boy with a woman at Union Station, and the woman walked away alone.
The unattended child was discovered around 6:30 p.m. Wednesday at Union Station in downtown Los Angeles by LAPD Transit Services Division officers and was turned over to the Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services.
Webster showed up at Union Station just before 2 p.m. Thursday and officers made contact with her and gathered information that led them to believe that she was the boy’s biological mother and was responsible for him being left alone, police said.