Baby Girl Found in Box in South-Central Lot : Crime: Homeless woman is charged with abandoning premature infant weighing less than 2 pounds.

Police arrested a 33-year-old homeless mother of nine Friday on charges of abandoning a newborn girl--weighing less than two pounds--in a South-Central Los Angeles lot.

Tamara Sampson was arrested Friday when she came to the Southeast station after seeing news reports about the abandoned baby, Detective Connie Castruita said. Sampson’s children live with relatives and she frequently stops by her mother’s South-Central home, police say. Sampson will face child endangerment charges, for which she could spend from one to six years in jail if convicted, authorities said.

A pedestrian found the 1-pound, 9-ounce baby wrapped in a sheet inside a small cardboard box at 109th Street and Central Avenue about 1:30 a.m. Thursday. Police transported the girl to Martin Luther King Jr./Drew Medical Center, where she was connected to a respirator. Her doctor said Friday that she had a good chance of surviving.

“You can never read the mind of a mother who gives birth to a child . . . then leaves the baby in a shoe box and walks away,” said Lili Ahmadi, a spokeswoman for the county Department of Children’s Services. “As a mother, I can’t understand that.”

The baby’s physician, Dr. Frans Walther, said the girl was born about two months premature. He said she had probably been born about 30 minutes before she was found.

Walther said test results on whether the mother had been using drugs during the pregnancy were not available.

Walther said other possible causes of the girl’s tiny size, abnormal even for a premature baby, would be congenital defects or illness suffered by the mother.

It is too early to tell whether the girl will be handicapped, Walther said, but he gave her an 85%-90% chance of survival. “The baby looks quite sturdy,” he said.

Ahmadi urged other mothers who do not want to be burdened with babies to contact Children’s Services, which she said could arrange for adoptions. “You don’t have to leave your baby on the corner of the street,” she said. “There is a better way.”