Mom ‘left her three kids alone in filthy home for years and only visited to drop off food’

A mother allegedly left her three children in a home in ‘deplorable shape’ for roughly four years and only stopped by to do food drops. The 34-year-old mom of Pontiac, Michigan, is accused of abandoning her son now aged 15 and daughters aged 14 and 13, back in 2020 or 2021. Cops conducted a welfare check of the home on Friday after the woman’s landlord reported not hearing from her since December and not receiving rent payments from her since October, according to the Oakland County Sheriff’s Office.

Her teenage son told deputies that he and his sisters had been subsisting on food dropped off on the porch by their mom or a stranger every month. The mother did not leave them toilet paper or personal hygiene items. Living conditions at the home ‘would be deemed deplorable and intolerable for an animal, and it is utterly unacceptable for three children’, said Sheriff Michael Bouchard. ‘Garbage was piled as high as four feet in some rooms, mold and human waste was found throughout, with the toilet overflowing and feces in the bathtub,’ he said.

The children were found wearing soiled clothing and with toenails a few inches long and matted hair. They boy slept on a mattress placed on the floor while his sisters slept on pizza boxes, authorities said. They stopped going to school after being abandoned and watched TV and played games at home. Neighbors said they saw the mom drop off items on a monthly basis but did not know the kids were living inside and did not see them outside.

All three children were taken to a hospital to be evaluated on Friday and have been taken to a relative by Child Protective Services. The mother, who has not been identified, was arrested at a different location. She said the father of her kids was out of the picture, according to officials. ‘Throughout my extensive career in this field,’ Bouchard said, ‘I have never encountered a scenario as dire and prolonged as this one, involving abandonment, neglect, and abuse of the highest order.’.

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