Babysitters

A Riverside County judge delivered a maximum one-year jail sentence Friday and strongly reprimanded a baby-sitter who ran errands while her pit bull fatally mauled a 2-year-old girl she had left unattended. "It's astonishing to me that people would keep certain types of pets around children," Superior Court Judge Albert J. Wojcik told Jackie Star Batey, 30, of Good Hope. "It's equally bewildering that a baby-sitter would leave a 2-year-old around the pet....

A baby-sitter whose pit bull is blamed in the death of a 2-year-old girl pleaded not guilty Monday to child endangerment and involuntary manslaughter charges. Jackie Star Batey's public defender entered the plea in Riverside County Superior Court in Murrieta. She did not comment as she left the Southwest Justice Center with her husband and two supporters. Batey, 30, was supervising Summer Clugston along with her four children and another child when the mauling occurred June 20, authorities said.

On good days, when the twins are smiling and following her every move through their Coke-bottle eyeglasses, Pattie Hunt loves being a foster mother. But on the bad ones -- when nothing stops their fussiness and Hunt has had just a few hours' sleep -- it gets a lot tougher. That's when dinner and a movie out with her husband beckon as much-needed relief, the Ojai foster mother says. "To have even a few hours to step away and breathe is wonderful," said Hunt, 49. "And then we're ready to go back."

A mother who allegedly abandoned her 2-year-old daughter at a baby-sitter's home was arrested Thursday, police said. Investigating officers said Ellen Hee Cho, 30, apparently left the girl at the baby-sitter's home May 13. Eight days later, the baby-sitter called police. The child's picture was broadcast on TV and seen by a friend of her father, who went to the police station Thursday. Kevin Cho had a falling out with his wife and assumed she had taken the child with her, police said.

A 20-year-old Santa Ana woman has been arrested on suspicion of smothering her 9-month-old niece when the child would not stop crying, officials said. Teresa Hurtado is accused of murder. Her arraignment was postponed until May 16. Orange County Superior Court Judge Cheryl Leininger ordered her held on $1-million bail. Santa Ana police said Hurtado smothered Brenda Martinez on Monday in an effort to keep the child from waking her own 1-year-old.

A baby-sitter threw two girls out a second-story window of a South Gate apartment Thursday before jumping out herself, authorities said. The girls, ages 3 and 4, fell about 15 feet into a muddy area and were not seriously hurt, their falls broken by a small tree, said Lt. Francis Arocha of the South Gate Police Department. Tyshunna Jackson, 23, the baby-sitter, who authorities believe was under the influence of drugs or alcohol, was taken to a hospital but refused treatment.

A teenager has been booked on suspicion of killing a 1-year-old boy he was baby-sitting, sheriff's deputies said Saturday. The 17-year-old baby-sitter called authorities to the home in the 41000 block of 15th Street in Lake Los Angeles about 1:45 p.m. Friday and told them the child had stopped breathing while in the bathtub. Investigators said they arrested the teen, whose name was not released because of his age, after finding injuries on the child's body.

A former baby-sitter was arrested and the 10-year-old girl he is suspected of abducting hours earlier in Riverside was recovered in good condition Tuesday when a tribal police officer stopped the man's pickup on a reservation in Nevada. "She was extremely glad to see me," said Ray East, the Walker River Indian Reservation policeman who stopped the pickup. "She's in excellent condition."

Even immersed in a much-needed vacation, my commitment to this column is such that my reading list included "The Other Parent: The Inside Story of the Media's Effect on Our Children," a new book by James P. Steyer.

Lois Crouch Matheny Addy, 109, a retired schoolteacher and principal who baby-sat for U.S. Sen. Strom Thurmond (R-S.C.) when he was a boy and always voted for him, died Monday in a nursing home in Saluda, S.C., the town where she spent her whole life. In a 1995 interview, Addy recalled taking care of a young Thurmond, whose father was a law partner with Addy's brother-in-law. "The easiest way to entertain him was riding horseback," she said. "We felt like he was our little brother."