From Niesha Lofing:
The three people accused of kidnapping and torturing a teenager from Sacramento allegedly forced him to stay in the wood-burning fireplace of a Tracy home and force-fed him pills and alcohol, police said in court documents.
According to the statement of probable cause, which is part of the search warrant affidavit filed in San Joaquin County Superior Court and obtained by The Bee, the 16-year-old was regularly beaten with a baseball bat, cut with a knife and once was strangled with a belt until he lost consciousness.
"On one occasion, he was asleep in (and chained to) the fireplace when one of the suspects purposefully lighted it, resulting in a significant burn-injury on his left arm," the Tracy police Det. Nate Cogburn wrote in the document.
Police found a blanket inside the fireplace, the document states.
The boy escaped last week and fled to a nearby health club asking workers there to help him.
The boy was not permitted to leave the home and was either chained to the fireplace or a heavy, "practically unmovable table," he wrote.
"His ankle was injured and seemingly permanently indented from the chain that encompassed it," Cogburn wrote.
The boy told police that his captors forced him to "ingest unknown pills, consume alcoholic beverages, and smoke marijuana in order to continuously keep him in a lethargic state," the document states.
The return of the search affidavit includes a list of property and evidence collected at the home on Tennis Lane, where Dec. 1, Michael Luther Shumacher and his wife, Kelly Layne Lau, were arrested. The third person arrested in connection with the case, Caren Ramirez, was arrested in Berkeley Dec. 2.
Police seized several disposable cameras, two cell phones, a computer and several bottles of alcohol from the home.
They also took three knives that were found in the top dresser drawer of the master bedroom and the couch and area rug from the living room. The carpet from around the fireplace, bricks from the fireplace hearth and the fireplace grate also were taken as evidence, the document states.
The boy had been kept at the home since mid-2007, the document states.
He is now in the custody of Sacramento County's Child Protective Services.
It is unclear how the boy wound up in the Tracy home, but Ramirez, who is not related to the boy, was given custody of him after his father allegedly abused him.
Ramirez lost custody of the boy in March 2007 after allegations of her abuse of the boy led to her pleading no contest to one count of child abuse.
The boy was placed in a Sacramento group home and he ran away shortly after, authorities said.
The boy showed up at the sports club that abuts the Schumacher home Dec. 1, bloodied, dirty and begging people there to hide him.
Schumacher, Lau and Ramirez are being held on more than $2.2 million bail in San Joaquin County Jail on multiple charges, including torture, kidnapping and child abuse. They are scheduled to be appear in court today.
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