Hearing Today in Kidnap Attempt Case

A 17-year-old high school senior who police say tried to kidnap a baby boy from St. John’s Regional Medical Center last week was just looking for someone to love her, the girl’s former boyfriend said Thursday.

Vito Lopez, 18, said he thinks his former girlfriend had gone through several emotional traumas in her life. He said she was lonely, traumatized by a difficult childhood and had received psychological counseling.

“I just think she had a lot of emotional things going,” Lopez said. “She just needed someone to love her. I guess she thought if she took this baby it would love her, you know.”

Arrested on Tuesday, the girl--a senior at Channel Islands High School--is set to be arraigned in juvenile court today on attempted kidnapping charges, said Deputy Dist. Atty. Rhonda Schmidt.

The district attorney’s office will also ask a judge within the next three weeks to consider trying the girl as an adult, Schmidt said, “because of the seriousness of the crime.”

If convicted as an adult, the girl could face up to 16 years in prison, officials said.

Schmidt said the teenager will probably receive a psychological evaluation soon.

Wearing a medical smock, the girl allegedly tried to steal newborn Ricardo Herrera Jr. from the St. John’s neonatal unit May 29, police investigators said.

A hospital employee, Greg Oswalt, followed the girl after she tripped an alarm when she left the ward carrying the baby, authorities said. She handed over the young boy and escaped on foot.

Police were tipped to her identity after her friends saw television news stories that showed a surveillance tape of her walking out of the hospital, said Oxnard Police Det. Robert Cox.

“I can’t tell you the specifics of what she told us, but from my interviews I believe she faked [a] pregnancy because she wanted to get her boyfriend back,” Cox said.

The girl told Lopez in November that she was pregnant.

The two would see each other often, but Lopez said he had made it clear he wanted to remain free of any long-term commitment.

He said the girl was OK with that, but that she often called him.

“Sometimes she was calling me like six times a day,” he said. Contacted Thursday at his home, the girl’s father declined to comment.

Lopez said he had suspicions that the pregnancy was a ruse because of what friends of the girl told him.

“But I think like two months into it she would let me touch her stomach and it was hard and big,” he said.