Erica Chapman, who lives at CityParc II at West Oaks Apartments, said she was among the people who had been feeding the malnourished 15-year-old, not knowing he was living with his two younger brothers. ‘The first time I saw him, he was sleeping on one of the slides,’ Chapman said in an interview.
Chapman said she noticed that the teen’s mother was rarely home. She would occasionally show up bearing noodles, snacks, and drinks. The abandoned teen would run downstairs to pick up the food and then return to the apartment. About six months ago, Chapman said she started offering the 15-year-old food, but she said he refused to accept cooked meals, only agreeing to take packaged snacks, fruit, and pizza.
Trevor Thompson, another neighbor who had been helping out the boy, told the station the child was paranoid and feared getting poisoned. Thompson said the teen knocked on his door one day, asking to borrow a charger. After that, the neighbor said he forged a bond with the boy and started offering him food. Both Thompson and Chapman said they had no idea there were two younger children living with the 15-year-old. Thompson recalled that on one occasion he asked the teen if he liked the pizza he had given him.
The neighbors said they never called the authorities because they did not grasp the severity of the situation involving the teen, who was described as quiet and discreet. ‘I didn’t want to push him away by asking questions because I knew he was starving and needed food,’ Chapman said.
All three surviving siblings were taken to a hospital for treatment. They were said to be malnourished and injured, and the 7-year-old had broken bones in his face. An autopsy is being conducted on the fourth child to determine a cause of death. According to investigators, the 15-year-old said that the parents hadn’t been living at home for months, effectively abandoning the children to be on their own. When police arrived in the home on Sunday afternoon, they found the brother’s skeletal remains out in the open.
It appears they were basically fending for each other, Harris County Sheriff Ed Gonzalez told reporters. The older sibling was doing the best he could to take care of the others.
The mother of the children, as well as her boyfriend, were located late Sunday night. They were being interviewed by homicide investigators. On Monday, they had been released and not charged. The three minors were with Child Protective Services (CPS) on Monday, and the agency was seeking emergency custody of the children. Melissa Lanford, the spokesperson for the Texas department that oversees the CPS, said in a statement,
To ensure the safety of the children, the Department of Family and Protective Services is seeking emergency custody of the three boys.
“Child Protective Services does have a history with the family, but there was no active CPS investigation at the time the children were discovered alone in their apartment,” the statement added. A removal hearing will take place in family court. When children are found in a situation of neglect, the state typically seeks emergency removal to ensure that they are promptly moved into a safer situation.
The Harris County Sheriff’s Office did not immediately respond Monday to a request for further details about the case, including the circumstances of the alleged neglect.
The apartment where the children were found had no power for at least a couple of weeks, Harris County Deputy Thomas Gilliland told the Houston Chronicle, and neighbors had been bringing the children food and charging their cellphones.
The Harris County Sheriff’s Office’s homicide, child abuse, and crime scene units are investigating. On Sunday afternoon, neighbors at the apartment complex about 20 miles west of downtown Houston watched as detectives carried out their investigation.
The neighbor in the apartment complex told the station KTRK that she complained for months about a foul odor emanating from the unit where the shocking discovery was made over the weekend. She said that 13 or 14 months ago, she first noticed a vile odor wafting from what she thought was an abandoned apartment. The smell was so bad, the woman said, that she would be forced to turn off her air conditioning to prevent it from entering her apartment through the vents.
‘Very horrific situation here, very tragic. I’ve been in this business for a long time and I’ve never heard of a scenario like this, it really caught me by surprise,’ said Gonzalez when addressing the media on Sunday evening. ‘We are trying to identify next of kin to determine exactly what happened and how we got to this point…We’re going to make sure we conduct a thorough follow-up investigation,’ he added.