A woman from Michigan was arrested and charged with abuse after the police discovered she left her three children to live alone for years in a house covered in garbage and faeces. The woman, identified as 39-year-old Kelli Bryant, was charged on Wednesday.
The children were left to live in extremely dirty and revolting conditions in a house in suburban Detroit. The police were called to the property by the landlord, who had not received rent since October. When the police arrived at the Pontiac home on Friday, they found a 15-year-old boy, a 12-year-old girl, and another girl, age 13, hiding in the house.
The police were shocked to find anyone at the property “because it appeared to be uninhabitable with piles of garbage and refuse several feet high,” according to Karen McDonald, Oakland County prosecutor. She added that the toilet was not working, and when the police found the children, they were covered in faeces.
When the children were taken outside, the girls struggled to walk. After they were taken to the hospital, they experienced more challenges with basic things like brushing their teeth and flushing the toilet, which McDonald said resulted from them not doing it in years.
She shared that the mother neglected the children at the property, and the children had no one to care for them. “These three kids were entrusted to the care of their mother,” she stated, adding, “the evidence suggests that she effectively abandoned them to a revolting pit of refuse and squalor.”
The mother was reportedly living somewhere else in Pontiac. The children were reportedly abandoned in 2020 or 2021 and only communicated with their mother via text messages when they needed something to eat.