A two-year-old girl was acting strange and appeared to be “lethargic” after she was brought home from daycare in Glendale Wednesday. Her parents took her to Verdugo Hills Hospital, where a battery of tests was performed. The diagnosis? Marijuana.

That, of course, attracted the attention of police, who retraced her steps Thursday, steps that allegedly led back to that daycare center, Glendale police Sgt. Tom Lorenz told the Weekly.

Once there, cops say they found a house of horrors:

Inside the state-licensed daycare facility at a home in the 3200 block of Orange Avenue in the La Crescenta area of Glendale cops found a bong, rodent droppings (among the toys, even), non-functioning toilets, knives on a kitchen counter, and a lack of electricity, Lorenz said.

Police were summoned to the hospital shortly after midnight and ended up making their way to the house about 6:30 a.m. yesterday, he said. Parents who started arriving to drop off their children were turned away and the place was essentially shut down, Lorenz said.


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The woman who runs the home, 50-year-old Roubena Hartounian, was arrested on suspicion of child endangerment, Lorenz said. She made bail, even though it was set at $100,000, he said.

City inspectors “yellow tagged” the home, deeming it uninhabitable, the sergeant said.

An active investigation into the daycare facility was still underway, he said. The Glendale News-Press, which broke the story, reported that …

… Hartounian told officers she accepted referrals from the Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services …

Lorenz told us county and state officials would be consulted as part of the investigation.

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