Boy, 3, Found Naked, Dazed; Search On for Sex Offender

A 3-year-old Los Angeles boy kidnaped by a man whom police say is a registered sex offender was reunited with his tearful parents Thursday after being found wandering, dazed and naked, on a lonely stretch of road near the Ventura County line.

“They say he is OK,” Armando Escobar, 34, sobbed as he and his wife, Adelina, 34, hugged their silent, wide-eyed son in a police station lobby crammed with photographers, reporters and police.

“I am blessed,” Armando Escobar said. “I am so happy. I thank God.”

Police said initially that “all outward signs are that the boy is fine,” but a medical examination revealed that he had been sexually molested.

An all-points bulletin was issued for Kenneth K. Rasmuson, 25, of Santa Barbara, who pleaded no contest to two counts of child molestation in 1981. Rasmuson was released from Atascadero State Hospital on April 17, 1985, after the hospital director sent the court a staff report that concluded that Rasmuson “would no longer be a danger to the health and safety of others. . . . “

Investigators at the Los Angeles Police Department’s Rampart Division station said Rasmuson was identified after a neighbor of the Escobars, Orlando Fonseca, 38, chased and copied down the license number of the suspect’s tan, 1978 Toyota Celica.

The victim’s sister, Camelia, 12, said she, her brother and two young cousins were playing with skateboards on a sidewalk beside the cousins’ home at 1st Street and Kenmore Avenue about 8:45 p.m. Wednesday when the suspect, who had been driving west on 1st Street, pulled suddenly into the driveway beside them.

“The man grabbed (the boy) and threw him inside the car,” Camelia said. “I started screaming, ‘I want my brother back!’ The man just stared at me. Then he drove off.”

Neighbor Chases Car

Fonseca, who works two jobs and was just pulling into the alley to park, heard the scream from the street corner and ran to see what was going on.

“I wanted to see who it was because my own boy plays out there,” he told The Times. “I saw somebody take someone and put him into the car. I thought they were playing.”

But Camelia kept screaming, and the boy in the car was crying. Fonseca ran back to his car and took out after the suspect going east on 1st Street. Fonseca said he managed to catch up with the speeding Toyota and stay with it along Beverly Boulevard to Normandie Avenue.

Fonseca said he was still not certain that he was following the right man but saw him apparently pushing the child down out of sight as they turned up one street and down another. Fonseca lost him but kept circling the neighborhood and saw him again, this time writing the license number--753 VWN--on his palm with a pencil before the car eluded him again.

“I was sure he had a gun,” Fonseca said, “but it wouldn’t have made any difference. I wouldn’t have wanted anybody to take my little boy.”

The kidnaped boy’s parents, who live in the Highland Park area, were summoned to the Rampart Division station as the search for their son fanned out.

Detectives said that about 9 a.m. Thursday, a motorist found the boy wandering unclothed down Kanan Road, about 2 1/2 miles south of the Ventura Freeway in the Agoura area. A California Highway Patrol officer stopped by moments later, and word that the boy had been found was relayed to his anxious parents.

Search for Suspect

Rasmuson, a recent Santa Barbara resident, was known to frequent an address in the San Fernando Valley, police said. He was described as a brown-haired, blue-eyed Caucasian; 5 feet, 11 inches tall, and about 155 pounds.

Court records show that on Sept. 1, 1981, Rasmuson lured an 11-year-old boy into an isolated area of a park in Santa Barbara and molested him. Rasmuson was arrested near the park shortly afterward.

On Nov. 25, 1981, Rasmuson pleaded no contest to two counts of lewd and lascivious acts on a child under 14 years of age and was sent to the facility at Atascadero.

On Feb. 4, 1985, Gordon W. Gritter, acting clinical and medical director at Atascadero, forwarded a staff report on Rasmuson to Ronald C. Stevens, presiding judge of Santa Barbara Superior Court. The report stated that Rasmuson, “as a result of hospitalization and treatment, has improved to the extent that he would no longer be a danger to the health and safety of others while on outpatient status and would benefit from such status.”

Ordered Released

On April 17, 1985, after considering the report, Stevens ordered Rasmuson’s release from the hospital on outpatient status.

“The police told me this man has dreamed of having a son,” Armando Escobar, a janitor at the downtown offices of First Interstate Bank, told a reporter. “When the police catch him, I will leave it up to the law. They know the best thing to do. . . .

“I feel sorry for him,” the boy’s father said. “He must have a big problem.”

Thordis Rasmuson, the mother of the suspect, told United Press International by telephone from her Glendale home that she had not heard from her son and did not know where he was.

“I’m so upset that it isn’t funny,” she said.

After that, however, a family friend said the Rasmusons were not taking calls.

Times staff writer Nieson Himmel contributed to this article.