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Shackled boy's case puzzles Tracy cops, shocks neighbors
By M.S. Enkoji and Niesha Lofing
menkoji@sacbee.com
Published: Wednesday, Dec. 03, 2008 | Page 1A
TRACY – Neighbors of a shackled 17-year-old boy tried on Tuesday to figure out how they missed so much for so long.
"It really upset me that this happened. You feel like you've been lied to," said Rachel Portillo, whose granddaughters had played with the teenager. "Why didn't we see something?" she said.
The boy, whose identity is being withheld by authorities, ran away from a Sacramento group home 15 to 18 months ago. He had been missing until Monday afternoon when he showed up seeking help at a Tracy health club, said Matt Robinson, a Tracy Police Department spokesman.
Chained at the ankle, covered in cuts and painfully gaunt, the trembling 17-year-old startled exercising clients at the In-Shape Sports health club when he ran in pleading, "Can you hide me? Can you hide me?"
After club employees called police, officers talked to the boy and later arrested Michael Luther Schumacher, 34, and Kelly Layne Lau, 30, of Tracy. They were arrested on suspicion of conspiracy, torture, kidnapping, child beating and false imprisonment.
The Tracy couple, who have four children of their own, are not related to the boy, Robinson said, andauthorities do not know how he got to their home, why he was there or if he was being held captive.
Authorities also are searching for a woman who is possibly the boy's aunt, Caren Ramirez, 43, of Sacramento. In addition to her alleged connection to the 17-year old, she is wanted on a probation violation in Sacramento County on felony child abuse charges.
"The key to this whole thing is the capture of Caren Ramirez," Robinson said. "Until we get her, it's just a giant jigsaw."
Ramirez was awarded custody of the boy in Sacramento County after the boy's father had lost custody, Robinson said.
Ramirez lost custody after she was arrested on felony abuse charges for incidents that began in 2005, Sacramento County court records show. She was accused of using some kind of weapon on two boys, who were 16 and 13 in 2007. In November 2007, Ramirez agreed to a five-year probation on the charges, but she failed to make court appearances and violated the probation. A warrant for her arrest was issued in April.
Police believe she has headed to relatives in East Palo Alto.
Neighbors of Schumacher and Lau said they saw Ramirez at the couple's Tracy home on Monday. She visited regularly, and some neighbors said they were told that Ramirez was the boy's mother.
Schumacher and Lau live in a sea of large, tract homes near a busy stretch of Tracy Boulevard where the In-Shape Sports club is located.
No one was home Tuesday at their two-story home that had two Christmas wreaths on the double front doors. The couple's children, ages 1, 3, 7 and 9, were turned over to child protection authorities, according to Robinson.
Some neighbors said they saw nothing but a normal household filled with garage sales, Girl Scouts, a stay-at-home mom.
Portillo, who often sent her granddaughters to the house after school to play with the younger children, said Lau had told her the teenage boy was visiting. Lau offered no explanation for why he wasn't in school.
The boy always appeared to be busy with chores, but he never expressed any plea for help, Portillo said.
Jennifer Foster, who lives on Tennis Lane, said her two young sons regularly played with the young children at the Schumacher house. The family told her that the teenager was just staying with them.
Foster's husband was inside the house in August to help fix the family's air conditioning. "He didn't see anything weird," Foster said.
"When you hear stories like this, you think, 'I can't believe this,' " she said. "When it's a family whose children have played with your children, it really hits home."
Chris Sandoval, 17, and his friend, Navid Sharifi, 17, said they were outside Monday afternoon on Tennis Lane when the boy apparently made a break, running down the street, then turning toward the health club.
The boy looked like he'd just gotten beat up, Sandoval said. He seemed disoriented and lost, unsure of where to go. Both boys said they noticed the chain around his ankle.
Barefoot and clad only in boxer briefs in the chilly fog, the boy made his way to the health club and burst inside. A towel that employees wrapped around him stuck to drying blood on his back. His hands trembled so badly he couldn't peel a banana someone gave him. He was covered in soot, beseeching employees: "Don't let them take me. Don't let them take me."
He looked like he was only 12, one employee said.
"I don't know how anyone could do this to a child," said Lea Leonardo, assistant general manager at In-Shape.
The boy is in stable condition at a Tracy hospital and is under guard, Robinson said.
"We've got security at the door so that he knows no one is going to get to him," he said. He will also get counseling.
The boy's ordeal moved police officers, who chipped in to buy a Nintendo DS game system for the boy, Robinson said.
"This case just got to them."
At the health club, where employees first tended to the boy, Leonardo said there were tears there, too.
"I did say a prayer last night, driving home," she said, "that any child in that situation, to have the courage to escape and for God to take care of them until they do."
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I hate people who treat children like this.
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<br />The best thing happened. A guy was butchering Conway Twitty at Karaoke and the power went off in the bar. Someone shouted you pissed Jesus off when you messed with Conway!
