Monday, July 18, 2011
Kids Returned To Mom’s Care When Found With No Food, Supervision
Four children who were staying with family members for summer visitation were returned to the care of their mother last week when police officers found they were without food, water or adult supervision.
Reports filed through the Lawrence County Sheriff’s Department show that several deputies were dispatched to a home on Poplar Street in Iron City to intervene in a domestic altercation on Tuesday.
Deputies report that the youngsters, ages 12, 6, 4, and 4 months, had been staying with their father and grandparents at the home.
The mother, a resident of Cypress Inn, Tennessee said her twelve-year-old daughter had called her at work, asking that she bring food to them. She told deputies she purchased $70 worth of food along with some pizzas and had come to the home to deliver them to her children.
While she was there, reports indicate the grandparents of the children arrived home from work and an altercation ensued.
Deputies report that six adults and eight children had been living in the home. There was no running water, a very small amount of food, and only a baby bed, set of bunk beds and a full size bed to accommodate all fourteen individuals.
Four of the adults, deputies report, were living at the home because a month before the four-year-old had been playing unsupervised and had ignited a fire that completely destroyed the house next door.
The twelve-year-old told deputies she had been tasked with caring for her siblings throughout the summer. She said she didn’t have anything to feed the baby that morning and no water with which to mix a bottle of formula, so she called her mother for help. She said she had been having to feed the baby Coke in his bottle.
When they asked the grandmother about the matter, reports show she told deputies “she could not feed everybody living there and the other adults wouldn’t do anything to help.” She told deputies that some of the adults living at the home were supposed to have been supervising the children while they were working.
Deputies asked the children’s father whether he would allow them to be returned to the custody of their mother and he agreed to do so.
The matter remains under investigation through the department’s Criminal Investigation Division as well as the Department of Children’s Services.
