TRACY – The boy who walked into a Tracy gym earlier this week wearing a shackle on one leg and suffering from numerous injuries "Won't be right for a long time," said a Tracy police official close to the case. Another said the boy had been enduring "torture."

Tracy police spokesman Matt Robinson made that observation after reporters covering the case noted that the boy had been through a long ordeal that culminated with his arrival, gaunt, hurt and chained, at the health club Monday.

Three of the people suspected of responsibility for the boy's condition have been arrested. One, Caren Ramirez, the 17-year-old's aunt, is being interrogated by Tracy detectives. She was arrested Tuesday night. A Tracy couple, Michael Luther Schumacher, 34, and Kelly Layne Lau, 30, were arrested earlier. All three were taken into custody on suspicion of conspiracy, torture, kidnapping, child beating and false imprisonment.

Ramirez, 43, was called the "key to the whole thing" by Robinson before her arrest.

The boy was released from the hospital today and returned to Sacramento in the care of Sacramento County Child Protective Services personnel. Several people have called The Bee seeking to make donations on the boyu's behalf, but no mechanism for taking such donations has been set up yet.

Conditions in the house where the boy had lived with Schumacher and Lau shocked emergency personnel who responded there.

"It's just the totality -- what they say, what they heard, what they could smell," said Tracy police Capt. John Espinozo. "Torture events are thankfully seldom seen by police officers."

He said that in 24 years of law enforcement, it was only the second such case he had investigated.

The boy, Espinozo said, "has had a traumatic life."

In the meantime, neighbors on Tuesday said they were trying to figure out how they missed so much for so long.

"It really upset me that this happened. You feel like you've been lied to," said Rachel Portillo, whose granddaughters had played with the teenager. "Why didn't we see something?" she said.

The boy, whose identity is being withheld by authorities, ran away from a Sacramento group home 15 to 18 months ago. He had been missing until Monday afternoon when he showed up seeking help at a Tracy health club, Robinson said.

Chained at the ankle, covered in cuts and painfully gaunt, the trembling 17-year-old startled exercising clients at the In-Shape Sports health club when he ran in pleading, "Can you hide me? Can you hide me?"

After club employees called police, officers talked to the boy and later arrested Schumacher and Lau. The couple, who have four children of their own, are not related to the boy, Robinson said, and authorities do not know how he got to their home, why he was there or if he was being held captive.

Ramirez, in addition to her alleged connection to the 17-year old, she was wanted on a probation violation in Sacramento County on felony child abuse charges.

Robinson had called Ramirez the "key to this whole thing. Until we get her, it's just a giant jigsaw," he said Tuesday before the arrest.

Ramirez was awarded custody of the boy in Sacramento County after the boy's father had lost custody, Robinson said.

Ramirez lost custody after she was arrested on felony abuse charges for incidents that began in 2005, Sacramento County court records show. She was accused of using some kind of weapon on two boys, who were 16 and 13 in 2007. In November 2007, Ramirez agreed to a five-year probation on the charges, but she failed to make court appearances and violated the probation. A warrant for her arrest was issued in April.

Neighbors of Schumacher and Lau said they saw Ramirez at the couple's Tracy home on Monday. She visited regularly, and some neighbors said they were told that Ramirez was the boy's mother.

Schumacher and Lau live in a sea of large, tract homes near a busy stretch of Tracy Boulevard where the In-Shape Sports club is located.

No one was home Tuesday at their two-story home that had two Christmas wreaths on the double front doors. The couple's children, ages 1, 3, 7 and 9, were turned over to child protection authorities, according to Robinson.

Call The Bee's M.S. Enkoji, (916) 321-1106. Bee researcher Sheila A. Kern contributed to this report.