SALT LAKE CITY — What started as a shoplifting investigation ended with a mother being arrested for investigation of child abuse and her two daughters taken into state custody.
About 3:15 p.m. Tuesday, an officer was called to a convenience store at 500 N. Redwood Road on a report of a possible shoplifting, said Salt Lake police detective Cody Lougy. The officer found a 10-year-old girl who had taken something, and noticed that the girl "had a swollen face from her ear to the bottom of her jaw and was bleeding from the ear," according to a Salt Lake County Jail report.
The girl told the officer her mother, Lucinda Escobar, 30, had beaten her with a belt that had "large circles" on it, and used a second belt to wrap around her neck and "repeatedly punched and slapped the victim in the face while pulling the belt," the report states.
The girl also said she had been beaten with a phone cord on another occasion, according to police.
The girl was taken to a local hospital to be checked out for "multiple injuries," Lougy said. As investigators questioned the girl, they learned her 5-year-old sister, who was still at home, had been beaten with a belt that same day, the report states.
Officers went to an apartment near 600 S. Redwood Road and found the 5-year-old who repeated what her sister had told detectives, according to the report.
Escobar was arrested for investigation of intentional child abuse and reckless child abuse, in addition to child endangerment and possession of drug paraphernalia.
A methamphetamine pipe was found in the apartment in an area where the children's clothes are kept, police say.
Escobar previously has been arrested and charged with numerous traffic violations, according to state court records. She was charged with DUI in 2009 and still had an active warrant for her arrest on Tuesday when police found her.
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