Supervisors Order Investigation of Glendale Foster Child’s Death

The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday ordered an investigation into the beating death last month of a 19-month-old Glendale child who was living in a county foster care home.

The coroner’s office has ruled that the death was a homicide, and the boy’s foster parents have been charged with murder.

The Board of Supervisors directed the children’s services inspector general to determine whether the foster parents were adequately screened and whether Department of Children and Family Services caseworkers made a sufficient number of follow-up visits to the foster home.

The board also unanimously asked department officials to explain why the agency apparently neglected to inform the supervisors about the death before it was reported in the media.

Department spokeswoman Victoria Pipkin-Lane said the delay occurred because the agency’s liaison with the Board of Supervisors was on vacation at the time of the death.

The child, Julio Gonzalez, died Dec. 29 at Huntington Memorial Hospital in Pasadena after his foster parents reported that he was having trouble breathing. The couple, Fernando Enriquez Paz, 34, and Maria Del Carmen Elizabeth Paz, 29, were charged with murder last week after an autopsy showed the cause of death to be head trauma.

County foster care officials have said caseworkers had been visiting the foster home once a month since the boy and his twin were placed there in July and detected no signs of mistreatment.

Times staff writer Efrain Hernandez Jr. contributed to this story.