A Gardena woman who had been granted guardianship of two children was arrested after California Highway Patrol officers found that she had driven 70 miles with seven children packed into her Toyota compact, including two locked in the trunk.
The incident occurred Friday evening when a motorist noticed the car parked on the side of the San Diego Freeway in West Los Angeles and then saw a woman checking on two children in the trunk before closing the trunk and driving north on the freeway.
Concerned because the temperature was in the high 80s, the motorist called 911 and for about an hour tailed the vehicle into the Antelope Valley, where a CHP officer pulled the car over.
The officer found Laverne Dunlap, 35, in the car and a passenger in the front seat with a 10-year-old boy on her lap and four children, ages 5 to 17, wedged in the backseat, none of them wearing seat belts, said CHP Officer Wendy Hahn.
"When the officer asked to look in the trunk, [Dunlap] said, 'absolutely,' and sure enough there were two kids in the trunk," Hahn said.
Dunlap told the officer that she did not have enough room in the car and that the children wanted to ride in the trunk, Hahn said.
She also told the officer that after leaving Gardena to visit a relative in Palmdale, she had stopped twice to check the children in the trunk.
That, she said, was what the motorist saw on the side of the road.
Authorities said that two of the children in the car were Dunlap's biological children and that two were under her guardianship.
Two of the remaining children belonged to her boyfriend and the seventh one was the daughter of the adult passenger, according to a confidential memo sent to county supervisors Wednesday by the Department of Children and Family Services.
The memo, which was read to The Times by county officials on condition of anonymity, stated that Dunlap had been granted guardianship of one child by a probate court and of the other through a state program designed to find permanent homes for children in long-term foster care.
Typically, social workers complete a background check on parents who seek legal guardianship.
The memo stated that county officials had at one time or another investigated allegations of abuse or neglect involving at least five of the seven children in the car.
But the memo cited no allegations that were substantiated and did not state that Dunlap was considered a suspect in those cases.
