Los Angeles – Kayla Elliott thought he was helping a family who could not conceive when giving birth to a substitute child for a couple in southern California.
On the other hand, he said, she was caught in a deception network that led the police to discover 21 children, who were born from different substitute mothers, who lived in Silvia Zhang and Guojun Xuan’s house in Arcadia, a suburb of the northeast of Los Angeles.
Zhang and Xuan were arrested in May under suspicion of serious crime in danger and negligence after a local hospital called the police to report that a 2 -month -old baby had arrived with head injuries, said Arcadia police in a statement.
It is suspected that a babysitter who worked with the couple violently shakes the child, which makes the baby lose knowledge. According to the police, the parents were aware of the abuse, but they could not seek timely medical help.
An order of order for the babysitter has been issued, to whom the police have not been able to locate, police said.
Elliott said Wednesday that he was stained when he knew that the boy he had was among them.
“I was a bit hysterical,” he said. “You just don’t expect you to go through a pregnancy and childbirth and then deliver to their parents and, suddenly, discover that there was abuse and negligence.”
The subrogation agency, Mark Subrogacy Investment LLC, told him That the couple had a teenage son and who had resigned to try to have a second after 10 rounds of failed fertility treatments, Elliott said.
He later learned that Mark Subrogacy was registered in the couple’s arcadia direction.
During their child danger investigation, the police discovered 15 children in the couple’s house. Six more children belonging to the couple were found in the care of family and friends. The youngest was the 2 -month -old boy, and the oldest was 13, police said.
“We believe that one or two were born biologically from the mother,” police lieutenant Kollin Cieadlo said. “There are some substitutes that occurred and said they were children’s substitutes.”
It was not clear immediately if Zhang and Xuan had a lawyer who could speak in their name.
Although public records show that the commercial license for Marcos’s subrogation was recently fired, a pregnant substitute told NBC News that the agency continues to contact it.
On Wednesday, Ktla-TV of Los Angeles reported that he received a text message from a phone associated with Zhang that said: “Any accusation of irregularities is wrong and incorrect. We hope to claim such claims at the appropriate time when and if actions are brought.”
After the baby Elliott transported for Zhang and Xuan, he learned that he was not living in Cuba with the couple but with a babysitter and another son of a similar age, he said.
Kallie Fell, executive director of the non -profit network of Bioethics & Culture Network, said Elliott’s experience is not completely uncommon. She said she has spoken with hundreds of substitutes worldwide who shared nightmare scenarios, including a woman whose substitute family refused to provide healthy living conditions while she was pregnant.
“There are so many ways in which this type of thing can go sideways, and no amount of law will protect a woman or child, because substitute pregnancies are high by nature,” he said.
In the case of Elliott, something seemed as soon as the baby was born, he said. Zhang arrived hours late for the birth and barely looked at the baby in the hospital room, Elliott said. Before leaving, Zhang gave Elliot $ 2,000 in cash.
“I don’t know what the reason was now, but it was very, very, very, not what you would expect from someone who really wanted a son,” Elliott said. “It was very transactional.”
The boy that Kayla was born now is in parenting care, and said he is working to obtain the baby’s custody.
The other 20 children are under the custody of a California child welfare agency, while the Arcadia and FBI police investigate the couple and determine whether they cheated substitute mothers throughout the country, authorities said.
The bond for Zhang and Xuan was set at $ 500,000 each. They were released, he said.
Emilie Ikeda and Alicia Victoria Lozano reported from Los Angeles and Minyvonne Burke from Pittsburgh.
