Child Abandonment

A South-Central Los Angeles woman who left her children alone in a filthy apartment was sentenced Thursday to a year in County Jail. Patricia Quiroz, 26, who had pleaded guilty to child abuse charges, also was placed by Superior Court Judge Jacqueline O'Connor on three years probation and ordered to pay a $200 fine and take parenting classes.

A woman gave away her newborn baby because she wanted to conceal the birth from her female romantic partner, Long Beach police said. After giving birth to a girl at a home Monday, Paloma Espinoza, 28, of Long Beach handed off the infant to her mother, Sonia Hernandez. Hernandez called 911 and gave a false report that she found an abandoned baby in the parking lot of a nearby gas station and took the girl home, police said. In fact, the baby was never at the gas station, said Sgt. Rico Fernandez.

The Japanese press called it the "Affair of the Four Abandoned Children of Nishi-Sugamo," as the nation was shocked to find out a mother had abandoned her children in their apartment. For months in 1988, the youngsters lived alone with just a few thousand yen to subside on, and no one in the complex even realized the children were there. This haunting story of child abuse has been fictionalized in the docudrama "Nobody Knows," which opens Friday.

Authorities have arrested a 19-year-old Anaheim woman in the death of a newborn girl who was found wrapped in plastic in a trash bin in Stanton on Wednesday. The woman, whose name is being withheld pending further investigation, is being treated at a hospital. A deputy is at her side, making sure she remains in custody until her medical release, said Jim Amormino, a spokesman for the Orange County Sheriff's Department. Authorities found the woman when she entered West Anaheim Medical Center on Wednesday afternoon in need of treatment.

Felony child endangering and child abandonment charges have been filed against a 19-year-old San Fernando woman who left her newborn baby in the cab of a pickup truck Saturday, authorities said. Aracelia Alvarez, a junior at San Fernando High School, abandoned her son in a truck parked in the 500 block of N. Workman Street about 9 p.m., said Deputy Dist. Atty. David R. Lopez. "She deserted the child and she did that with the intent to abandon the child," Lopez said. "She no longer wanted him."

A woman who allegedly abandoned her 18-month-old daughter in a discount store was charged Tuesday with two felony counts of child abandonment. She is scheduled to be arraigned today in Van Nuys Municipal Court. Hang Tran, 31, of Reseda is accused of leaving the toddler, Trinh Tran, at the Target store in the Fallbrook Mall in West Hills. She was arrested at her home Sunday after police tracked her down from documents found with the abandoned child.

A Reseda woman who allegedly abandoned her 18-month-old child in a discount store pleaded not guilty Wednesday to two counts of felony child abandonment and was released on her own recognizance. At her arraignment in Van Nuys Municipal Court, Hang Tran, 31, was released after she agreed to continue taking a prescribed medication, to continue seeing a counselor and to continue living with her brother-in-law, who is an assistant pastor at her church.

An Oxnard woman was arrested Monday after she walked through a crowded intersection, gave her 14-month-old son to two joggers and wandered away in an drug-induced haze, police said. As Kimberly Osmond walked through traffic on Harbor Boulevard about 6 a.m., two joggers concerned about the toddler's safety persuaded Osmond to get out of the road, according to Oxnard police. Osmond then reportedly handed the child to the joggers and kept walking southbound on Harbor Boulevard.

The premature baby looked warm and secure enough Wednesday, swaddled in a blanket with a blue knit cap covering his brown hair, as he lay in the Infant Special Care Unit at UCI Medical Center. But just hours earlier, the newborn was discovered barely breathing, naked, blue with cold, and lying face down on the asphalt behind a dumpster in one of Santa Ana's worst drug-infested neighborhoods. He was the second baby found abandoned in Orange County this month.

A young Mar Vista woman who attended her high school prom in May now walks into a courtroom wearing a blue L.A. County jail jumpsuit. Alejandra Gomez, facing a murder charge, is accused of secretly giving birth to a baby boy, who died after she dumped him in a trash can earlier this year. A former USC student, Linda Chu, is serving a five-year term in a San Joaquin Valley prison for strangling her newborn daughter, then dumping her into a trash chute that serviced her dormitory.

Agnes Awori is hurrying to the market, early afternoon. She sees a cluster of perhaps two dozen people on the railway track. Probably the usual thing, she thinks: someone killed by a train. The 53-year-old widow, who lives in the Kibera slum outside Nairobi, doesn't have time to waste: She has 11 children to support -- four of her own, the rest her dead sister's. But she can't resist the twinge of curiosity tugging her to the tracks. Turns out it isn't a body, just a plastic shopping bag. It's been lying there at least four hours, someone tells her. It moves.

Los Angeles police, continuing to investigate why a man apparently abandoned a baby girl at a Mid-City hospital, said Monday that "his involvement is still being considered for criminal prosecution." Police said the 6-month-old girl was reunited with her mother after her grandparents saw a televised news report and called police. The mother apparently left the baby with her biological father for a weekend visit, police said. Half an hour later, the baby was brought to the Olympia Medical Center by a man who was not her father.

Nebraska officials say a 14-year-old California boy has become the last child reported abandoned under the state's safe-haven law before it was changed to limit such drop-offs to infants no more than 30 days old. Nebraska officials say the Yolo County boy was driven to Kimball County Hospital on Friday by his mother. Authorities say the boy has been placed in a foster home while state officials contact the appropriate agencies in California. That brings to 36 the number of children left at Nebraska hospitals since the state's law went on the books in July.

First Melyssa Cowburn's 5-year-old child tried to bash in a baby's head with a hammer. Then he set the shower curtain on fire. The next day he plugged all the sinks and toilets in their apartment and flooded the place. Cowburn and her husband had tried unsuccessfully to get their insurance company to pay for mental health treatment for the boy. The difficulty she had keeping him under control had already helped drive her to attempt suicide last year.

Nebraska legislators opened a public hearing Monday on adding an age limit to a safe-haven law that has allowed nearly three dozen children -- some close to adulthood -- to be abandoned at hospitals. Lawmakers are in a special session in Lincoln called by Gov. Dave Heineman, who has proposed allowing parents and guardians to drop off only infants no older than 3 days at hospitals without fear of prosecution for abandonment. Some legislators want a higher age limit; Sen.

Officials say a 15-year-old girl dropped off at an Omaha hospital is the 27th child left under the state's unique safe-haven law. Nebraska uses the word "child" without age limit; the laws usually are intended to protect newborns.

The Los Angeles County Fire Department's 157 fire stations on Tuesday were designated "safe havens" where people can surrender an infant without fear of prosecution. Hospital emergency rooms in the state already serve as safe havens. A parent must surrender the child within 72 hours of birth to avoid child abandonment charges.

Two suspected shoplifters got away with some loot Sunday but left behind a 1-year-old child, police said. The child's mother is being investigated for child abandonment, authorities said. About 5:15 p.m., two women walked into the Marshall's store on Ventura Boulevard in Oxnard with the girl, Oxnard Police Officer Michael Adair said. While in the store, they allegedly put some clothing into the baby's diaper bag and left the store without paying for the merchandise, police said.

Deciding he could wait no longer, Gov. Dave Heineman said Wednesday that he would call a special legislative session to alter a safe-haven law that in just a few months has allowed parents to abandon nearly two dozen children as old as 17. Heineman had planned to wait until the next regular legislative session in January but changed his mind as the number of dropped-off children grew.