A family is accusing the Los Angeles Unified School District of allowing their children to be taken from an Encino school by their biological mother, who disappeared with them for nine hours.
The brothers, ages 8 and 10, were attending an after-school program at Lanai Road Elementary School. Their adoptive mother, Christa Ramey, typically picks them up around 5 p.m., according to their attorney.
But on May 14, the children’s biological mother, Isabel Rios, walked into the school office around 3:30 p.m. and asked to pick them up, without providing identification, according to a lawsuit filed by her family against the school district. Such a lawsuit typically precedes the filing of a lawsuit.
Ramey said Rios is not named as the person responsible for picking up any of the children. According to the complaint, Rios lost custody of the siblings around 2015 due to drug addiction. Jasso, Rios' mother, adopted both children several years later.
That day, the children were called into the office and saw Rios waiting at the school gate. She called them over and told them she was there to pick them up, to which the children “reluctantly agreed,” according to the lawsuit.
There was no security personnel or staff at the gate where students are picked up, according to the complaint.
“This conduct is not only a negligent action by LAUSD and [the after-school program‘s] “This not only constitutes a violation of its mandatory duties to keep children in its custody safe from being abducted by unauthorized third parties when picked up from its campus, but also constitutes a breach of its mandatory duties to keep children in its custody safe from being abducted by unauthorized third parties,” the lawsuit states.
LAUSD declined to comment on the system implemented to pick up students from after-school programs.
“Los Angeles Unified takes the safety of all students very seriously,” said Shannon Haber, a spokesperson for LAUSD. “The District is investigating these allegations. However, Los Angeles Unified does not comment on pending or ongoing litigation.”
For nine hours that day, the brothers' whereabouts remained unknown, during which time Rios drove them on six buses and two trains to Compton, where her boyfriend's mother lived. Officials were eventually able to locate them with the help of closed-circuit cameras on public transportation, Ramey said.
“[The children] They were traumatized, scared, tired and in pain from all the walking and running they had to do,” the claim says.
The children knew Rios as a relative, but did not know she was their biological mother at the time of the incident, adding to their trauma, Ramey said.
“We had to force them to have that conversation,” the attorney said. “It was a lot of adult information that they had to learn at a very young age.”
Rios has since sent messages to Jasso threatening to take the children away again, said Ramey, who plans to address the situation Monday with a request for a restraining order for the family.
Children “are worried about going back to school” [and] “They don’t know if they will be safe,” she said. “They feel like that has been taken away from them.”
The claim was filed last week and Ramey said a lawsuit will likely be filed in October.
“Schools are supposed to teach our children, but they are also supposed to keep them safe,” she said.
