A Vancouver girl abducted from foster care disappeared after a bathroom break during a court-ordered visit with her mother at the Vancouver Mall, according to court documents.

Aranza Ochoa Lopez, 4, was taken Oct. 25 by her mother, Esmerelda Lopez-Lopez, after a male Washington state visitation worker gave the parent permission to retrieve her daughter out a bathroom, according to a search warrant affidavit. Lopez-Lopez drove off from the mall with Aranza and a 16-year-old girl that accompanied them.

Lopez-Lopez, 21, is suspected of fleeing with Aranza to Mexico in an acquaintance's stolen car. Authorities still haven't found Lopez-Lopez or her daughter.

Aranza has been in foster care since being removed from her mother's care by a Clark County Superior Court order in 2017. State child protective services determined Lopez-Lopez beat her daughter several times, sometimes causing bruises all over her body, the affidavit said.

Child welfare workers said Lopez-Lopez was a danger to her child because of the history of abuse, her history of erratic behavior and her failure to participate in a mental health assessment, according to the affidavit. Lopez-Lopez was allowed supervised visits with her daughter twice a week as of last month.

Four people have now arrested in Aranza's alleged abduction, which police say also included luring a man to Lopez-Lopez's Vancouver apartment where he was tied up and held for hours while Lopez-Lopez fled in his red 2012 Chevrolet Cobalt.

The 16-year-old girl traveling with them turned herself in to authorities at the U.S.-Mexico border and was extradited to Clark County on Nov. 19, Vancouver police said.

Francisco Hernandez Reyes, 18; Erick Garcia-Valdovinos, 18; a 15-year-old boy and the 16-year-old are all accused of first-degree kidnapping and first-degree robbery. It's not clear how the four people and Lopez-Lopez are connected.

The alleged robbery victim Jose Orellano-Gomez, 23, told police he knew Lopez-Lopez and that he was called to her Vancouver home Oct. 25 to give her a ride to Centralia, Washington, about 95 miles from Vancouver, according to court documents related to the teens' arrest.

Orellano-Gomez said he and Lopez-Lopez were alone in her apartment for about 20 minutes when three people in masks came into the unit carrying knives, pushed him down, tied him up with duct tape and carried him to a bedroom, the documents said. Once there, they taped him to an office chair.

He was held there for more than 12 hours until he was able to free himself, the documents said. He told police he'd been blindfolded, gagged and had headphones put over his ears.

After Lopez-Lopez left the mall with her daughter, she is suspected of using Orellano-Gomez's debit card later that day at a McDonalds in Coburg, about seven miles north of Eugene, according to the search warrant affidavit. Investigators later confirmed with store workers that the mother and the two girls had been there.

Texts from the 16-year-old and a call she made to her grandparents in Mexico indicated to investigators that Lopez-Lopez intended to take her daughter to La Libertad, near the Mexico-Guatemala border, the affidavit said.

On Oct 27, Facebook submitted records to investigators that showed the teen communicating with a man in southwest Tijuana. At some point, the man asked if she was close, the affidavit said.

Two days later, Facebook provided records that showed IP addresses for logins to Lopez-Lopez's account that indicated she was signing in from a device in Mexico, the affidavit said.

The three male teens all arrested in the case told Vancouver police that Lopez-Lopez told them of her plans to take Aranza two weeks before it happened, take the girl to Mexico and that 16-year-old was also in on the plot, the affidavit said. They said Lopez-Lopez communicated with them via Facebook Messenger.

-- Everton Bailey Jr.

ebailey@oregonian.com

503-221-8343; @EvertonBailey