April 27, 2010 9:58 AM
- Text
Fourth Arrest Made In Shackled Teen Case
(CBS/AP)
A fourth person is in police custody in connection with the case of a teen who showed up emaciated and shackled at a Tracy gym.
Investigators say 29-year-old Anthony Waiters was arrested at work yesterday in Pleasanton. He was booked at San Joaquin County Jail on charges of torture, conspiracy, child endangerment, corporal injury to a child and false imprisonment.
Police did not release any additional information about the arrest, citing a gag order.
Three other people face torture, kidnapping and multiple child abuse charges in connection with the case.
The 16-year-old boy showed up last week at a gym, half-naked and wearing shackles around his ankles. Authorities say the teen had been kept chained in a fireplace, choked with a belt and denied food for days at a time during more than a year in captivity in the home of Michael Schumacher and his wife Kelly Layne Lau.
Caren Ramirez, the boy's one-time guardian was arrested along with Schumacher, 34, and Lau, 30. They face more than a dozen charges.
The teen's brother said he was also abused by Ramirez.
"I was going through the same thing," Austin, whose last name was withheld to protect his brother's identity, said Monday on CBS' The Early Show.
Austin said Ramirez beat him and his brother often "for no reason."
The abuse allegations have city officials in Tracy and child-abuse experts baffled as to how the abduction and torture of a teenage boy could have gone undetected for more than a year in this middle-class community once dubbed the second-safest in Northern California.
"Unless this child was chained in the basement for the duration, it's just not possible that somebody could not have seen something," said Lindy Turner-Hardin, executive director of the nonprofit Child Abuse Prevention Council of San Joaquin County.
But neighbors of a Tracy couple didn't notice much, except that the 16-year-old boy looked very skinny when he was spotted taking out the trash recently. And he was seldom seen outside even though he was of school age.
Investigators say 29-year-old Anthony Waiters was arrested at work yesterday in Pleasanton. He was booked at San Joaquin County Jail on charges of torture, conspiracy, child endangerment, corporal injury to a child and false imprisonment.
Police did not release any additional information about the arrest, citing a gag order.
Three other people face torture, kidnapping and multiple child abuse charges in connection with the case.
The 16-year-old boy showed up last week at a gym, half-naked and wearing shackles around his ankles. Authorities say the teen had been kept chained in a fireplace, choked with a belt and denied food for days at a time during more than a year in captivity in the home of Michael Schumacher and his wife Kelly Layne Lau.
Caren Ramirez, the boy's one-time guardian was arrested along with Schumacher, 34, and Lau, 30. They face more than a dozen charges.
The teen's brother said he was also abused by Ramirez.
"I was going through the same thing," Austin, whose last name was withheld to protect his brother's identity, said Monday on CBS' The Early Show.
Austin said Ramirez beat him and his brother often "for no reason."
The abuse allegations have city officials in Tracy and child-abuse experts baffled as to how the abduction and torture of a teenage boy could have gone undetected for more than a year in this middle-class community once dubbed the second-safest in Northern California.
"Unless this child was chained in the basement for the duration, it's just not possible that somebody could not have seen something," said Lindy Turner-Hardin, executive director of the nonprofit Child Abuse Prevention Council of San Joaquin County.
But neighbors of a Tracy couple didn't notice much, except that the 16-year-old boy looked very skinny when he was spotted taking out the trash recently. And he was seldom seen outside even though he was of school age.
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