California home of missing baby’s parents searched; father has served time for child cruelty

San Bernardino County sheriff’s investigators on Sunday, Aug. 17, searched the home of the parents of the baby whose mother reported the infant kidnapped as new details emerged Monday about the father’s child cruelty conviction in 2023.

Sheriff’s spokeswoman Mara Rodriguez confirmed Monday that investigators conducted the search. She declined to say what they were looking for or what they recovered, citing the ongoing investigation. K9s have been used throughout the search, she said, while declining to say whether cadaver dogs were deployed at the property.

“Investigators are continuing the search for Emmanuel around the clock and following up on all leads and investigative discoveries,” Rodriguez said.

Rebecca and Jacob Haro have not been arrested or charged. It was also unclear whether they had retained an attorney.

Emmanuel’s grandmother, Mary Beushausen, told KTLA/5 that the couple would not hurt their son. Beushausen told KTLA that the Sheriff’s Department asked Rebecca Haro to take a lie detector test and that her husband refused to do that until after they hired an attorney. The grandmother also said the mother had turned off her cellphone because she had received death threats. Jake Haro also was not answering his phone, Beushausen said.

Those details could not be independently confirmed on Monday.

Haro initially told investigators that she was changing the baby’s diaper next to her vehicle on Thursday outside a Big 5 store in Yucaipa when she was assaulted and knocked unconscious by an unknown man. When she awoke, the child was gone, she said.

Deputies searched unsuccessfully with K9s, according to a sheriff’s statement.

Rebecca Haro then pleaded in media interviews for the kidnapper to return Emmanuel.

Investigators interviewed several people, but when confronted with inconsistencies in her initial account, the mother declined to continue with the interview, sheriff’s officials said.

The national Uvalde Foundation for Kids then called off its independent search for the boy, as well as a $5,000 reward offer for information on the missing child — less than a day after launching the effort.

The search comes almost four years after Jake Haro and an apparently different spouse, Vanessa Haro, were charged with willful child cruelty in Riverside County after an infant was found to have fresh and healing wounds that placed it in critical condition.

According to an affidavit written by a Hemet police officer to obtain an arrest warrant, officers investigated a report that a 10-week-old girl had been admitted to Hemet Valley Hospital on Oct. 13, 2018, for treatment of broken bones.

Vanessa Haro, also known as Vanessa Avina, according to the document, told officers that she had picked up Jake Haro from work and dropped him off at home on Oct. 12 before driving to Beaumont to pick up her eldest daughter from school. She returned about an hour later and tried to nurse the infant, but she would not drink. Vanessa took the baby to a hospital.

Jake Haro told investigators that after Vanessa dropped him off, he took the baby’s temperature and found it to be 99-100 degrees. He bathed the baby and accidentally dropped it chest-first on the divider of the twin-basin sink. He could not detect any injuries.

That night, Vanessa woke up Jake and asked him to feel the baby’s back. He felt something “crackle,” the affidavit says. Jake told the investigator that he did not feel the crackle after bathing the infant.

Vanessa later declined to answer the investigator’s questions without an attorney present.

Doctors at Loma Linda University Medical Center told the officer who wrote the affidavit that the baby had an “acute” fractured rib, “healing” fractures of six ribs, a skull fracture, a brain hemorrhage, swelling of the neck and a “healing” fractured leg bone.

“The combination of the above findings in a pre-mobile infant, in the absence of a plausible history of significant trauma to explain the injuries, is indicative of abuse (sic) head trauma, child physical abuse and nutritional neglect,” the officer wrote, quoting a doctor.

Jake Haro told the officer that when he went home after visiting the hospital, his sister opened the web browser on his iPad and found a search for “How to feed a baby with broken ribs.” Jake told the officer that he did not use the iPad at the time of that search, which was performed before the hospital visit.

As the investigation continued, the officer wrote, Jake Haro blamed the injuries on his wife.

But both were charged with willful child cruelty on Oct. 5, 2021. They pleaded guilty to the charge on June 8, 2023.

Jake Haro was sentenced to 180 days in the sheriff’s work-release program, given a suspended four-year prison sentence and was ordered to attend a child abuser treatment program. Vanessa Haro was sentenced to 120 days in the work-release program and ordered to attend the child abuser treatment program.

Shortly after the baby was admitted to the hospital, Jake Haro filed a request for a domestic violence restraining order against his wife, Family Law records show. That case was eventually dismissed.

Jake Haro is due in court on Sept. 2 to answer to another charge: being a felon or addict in possession of a firearm.