Child Endangerment

A woman having sex Monday didn't notice that her shower curtain had caught fire, having disabled her apartment's smoke alarm to smoke methamphetamine, which she stored in an adjacent room where a baby was sleeping, authorities said. Susan Ruth Charnitski, 43, was arrested on suspicion of drug possession and child endangerment, said Orange County Sheriff's Sgt. Nancy Gafner. A candle in the bathroom ignited the plastic curtain, Gafner said, triggering a sprinkler in the building in the 1000 block of Calle Del Cerro.

An Anaheim mother remained in custody Friday on suspicion of felony child endangerment after her 13-month-old son drowned in their unfenced backyard pool. Police said they also are reexamining a case in 2005 when another of the woman's young sons died. Anaheim Police Sgt. Tim Schmidt said the boy's 12-year-old sister placed the 911 call about 3:30 p.m. Thursday, saying that her brother was in the family's backyard pool.

Los Angeles County officials Wednesday urged parents to avoid the increasingly popular practice of sleeping in the same bed as their infant children, calling the practice a "potentially lethal act." County statistics released Wednesday show that 44 infants died after they slept next to an adult in 2006, a 76% increase over the previous year. It was the county's highest number of deaths ever associated with "co-sleeping," the practice of sleeping in the same bed, couch or chair with an infant.

The state attorney general's office Monday filed drunk driving and other charges against a woman whose traffic confrontation with an off-duty police officer ended with her and her 8-year-old son being shot. Rachel Silva, 27, was charged with felony child endangerment for putting her son in "circumstances likely to produce great bodily injury or death."

The boy was naked except for a pair of gray boxer shorts. He was covered with soot and gashes and shackled with a heavy chain when he flopped over the 8-foot-high backyard fence and landed in a health club parking lot, free. Alarmed, a member of In-Shape Sports Club raced to see if the youth had been injured when he hit the cold pavement in this Bay Area bedroom community.

Drivers of cars and trucks swerved into other lanes to avoid a 3-year-old boy, wearing only a diaper and T-shirt, who was playing along a busy Indianapolis highway after wandering away from home while his mother slept, police said. Motorists stopped along the interstate to take care of the boy until officers arrived. The boy was unhurt. His mother, Nancy Dyer, 33, faces child neglect charges.

Two teenagers were arrested on felony charges of injury to a child after police found a video of them showing two boys, ages 2 and 5, how to smoke marijuana, police said. Fort Worth police found the video Feb. 22 while investigating burglaries. In the video, the children are called "potheads," and a joint is placed into a child's mouth. In another part of the video a boy is seen smoking on his own. The children were also asked if they "have the munchies."

A mother pleaded guilty in Erie to swinging her 4-week-old son like a bat to hit her boyfriend during a fight, fracturing the infant's skull in the process. Chytoria Graham, 27, pleaded guilty to aggravated assault and endangering the welfare of a child. Her son recovered from his injuries. The judge ordered a psychological examination for Graham before her sentencing, set for May 8.

A knife-wielding man who tried to abduct an 11-year-old girl in southern Orange County on Thursday may be the same person who tried to snatch an 11-year-old girl last week in the same region, authorities said. In both cases, the girls escaped unharmed. In the latest incident, the man got out of a beat-up pickup truck and held a large kitchen knife to the neck of a girl who attends Don Juan Avila Middle School in Aliso Viejo, said Orange County Sheriff's Department spokesman Jim Amormino.

Two women have been charged with killing an Altadena man then fleeing with a 4-year-old boy, the Los Angeles County district attorney's office said Thursday. Both were arrested in Las Vegas on Tuesday with the child, who was unharmed. Mesha Arshaz Dean and Vanessa Marie Ochoa, both 22, were charged with murder and child abuse. The shooting occurred Sunday in the home of the man, who is the child's uncle.