Photo: Arcadia Police Department
ARCADIA (CNS) - Arcadia police Wednesday continued investigating a case of alleged child abuse or neglect that led authorities to take custody of 21 children -- all born via surrogate -- who were under the care of two people arrested in May.
According to Arcadia police Lt. Kollin Cieadlo, a hospital notified them on May 7 that a 2-month-old infant had been admitted with a traumatic head injury and brain bleeding.
Detectives responded to a home in the 600 block of West Camino Real, where a search warrant was served, Cieadlo said.
Seized surveillance cameras showed a nanny employed by the infant's parents violently shaking and hitting the child on May 5, causing the baby to lose consciousness, according to Cieadlo.
"Despite being made aware of the incident, the child's parents failed to seek timely medical attention," Cieadlo said in a statement. "The child was not transported to the hospital until two days later, after the onset of seizures."
On May 9, arrest warrants were issued for the parents, 38-year-old Silvia Zhang and 65-year-old Guojun Xuan, and the nanny, 56-year-old Chunmei Li.
Zhang and Xuan were arrested on suspicion of felony child endangerment/neglect, with bail set at $500,000 each, Cieadlo said.
They have since been released, according to Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department inmate records.
Li remains at large.
"As a result of the investigation, the (county) Department of Children and Family Services was notified and responded to the residence," Cieadlo said. "The remaining children in the home were taken into protective custody."
A total of 15 children ranging in age from two months to 13 years old were taken into DCFS custody and six other children had been moved to other homes, but all 21 were confirmed to be the children of Zhang and Xuan, according to a broadcast report that quoted Cieadlo as saying many of the children were born through surrogacy before Zhang and Xuan took legal guardianship of them.
He said the children suffered severe verbal and physical discipline that caused authorities to suspect they were being abused.
A woman who gave birth to one of the children told ABC7 she conceived through IVF before turning the child over to the couple through an agency called Mark Surrogacy. The agency is owned by Zhang, and now goes by the name Future Spring Surrogacy, according to news reports and online records.
The surrogate mother said she was told Zhang and Xuan had only one child.
It's unclear why Zhang and Xuan wanted that many children under their care.