OJAI : Neighbor Describes Rother’s Home Birth

A neighbor testified Monday in Ventura County Superior Court that she was present when a screaming Pamela Rother gave birth on the living room floor of her dilapidated and unkempt trailer near Ojai.

Sixty-four days later, authorities found the baby dead on the same floor.

Rother, 32, is charged with felony child neglect that led to the starvation of her 2-month-old daughter on Feb. 22. She faces up to 10 years in prison if convicted.

“I heard her yelling for help about 7 a.m.,” Chanee Wolfe said Monday in court. “I woke up and went down to the trailer. She was on her hands and knees in the living room giving birth.”

Wolfe called an ambulance to take Rother and the baby to Ojai Valley Hospital. A day later, a friend brought Rother a bag of methamphetamine in the hospital, another woman tearfully testified Monday.

Kathleen Wurst first said she didn’t remember seeing the drug delivery, but Deputy Dist. Atty. Michael Frawley read aloud from a transcript of Wurst’s previous grand jury testimony in which she described the exchange. Wurst then burst into tears and admitted that the testimony was correct.

A patron of The Wheel tavern near Ojai also testified that Rother sat at the bar with her infant daughter a week before the baby died of starvation.

“She was carrying the child like a sack of potatoes,” Evelyn Jimenez testified.