Girl, 17, Admits She Tried to Steal Newborn

Moments after a judge found her fit to be tried in Juvenile Court, a 17-year-old girl pleaded guilty Wednesday to charges of trying to swipe a newborn baby from an Oxnard maternity ward.

Despite a prosecutor’s bid to file adult kidnapping charges against the Channel Islands High School senior, Judge Charles McGrath ruled that she had met all criteria for a Juvenile Court trial.

The girl was returned to Ventura County Juvenile Hall to await a July 29 sentencing that could send her to the California Youth Authority for up to three years.

“I understand why [McGrath] ruled the way he did,” said Deputy Dist. Atty. Rhonda Schmidt, declining to give many details about the closed hearing. “He had reports from several psychiatric and psychological professionals [and probation officers] that he found very convincing.”

The girl had donned a medical smock resembling a nurse’s uniform and walked into the neonatal unit at St. John’s Regional Medical Center on May 29, police said.

She approached family members who were crowded around newborn Ricardo Herrera Jr. and told them that the hours-old boy needed to have his picture taken, and that she would only be gone a few minutes.

She then took the child from a relative’s arms and tried to leave the hospital, police said. But a monitoring device on his tiny wrist triggered an electronic security system and alarms went off.

Greg Oswalt, an Oxnard respiratory therapist, stopped the girl near the exit and asked whose baby it was.

When she told him it was hers, he didn’t believe her, so she handed over the baby and fled, witnesses said.

The girl’s former boyfriend later said she had been feigning pregnancy in an attempt to win him back.

Vito Lopez said in an interview that his former girlfriend told him in November that she was pregnant. The two would see each other often, but he made it plain he wanted to avoid a long-term commitment, he said.

“She just needed someone to love her,” Lopez said last month. “I guess she thought if she took this baby it would love her, you know.”

Schmidt said that she pushed for adult kidnapping charges against the girl because of the severity of the crime.

She had filed a special allegation that the girl kidnapped the boy with the intent to permanently deprive his parents of him--a charge that could have boosted a maximum penalty to 16 years in prison.

“She admitted to everyone that she intended to raise the baby as Vito Lopez’s child,” Schmidt said.

But the girl had not planned the crime well--she had not even lined up a ride home from the hospital, said her attorney, Deputy Public Defender James Harmon.

The decision to take a baby was born out of turmoil in her own home, he said.

“There was a lot going on in her life in terms of some family problems,” Harmon said. “She was feeling sort of frustrated and rejected and so forth, she was having problems with her boyfriend . . . and [the kidnapping] was the way she felt she was going to be able to get somebody who wouldn’t bail out on her.”

But the girl had made few plans for raising the baby boy beyond getting out of the maternity ward with him, Harmon said.

“I don’t think she fully comprehends how catastrophic it would be for somebody to do that with your own child,” Harmon said. “But she feels pretty remorseful about it.”