- Oakland County Sheriff Michael Bouchard disclosed new details in a news conference Tuesday after 3 children were found living in “deplorable” squalor in a Pontiac condo.
- The case has made national headlines and stunned the community of Pontiac.
A teenage boy who lived for years in squalor after his mom abandoned him and his two little sisters left the house only twice: once to check the mail, the other to feel the grass.
“To hear that he came out to touch the grass is just crushing, soul crushing on so many levels,” Oakland County Sheriff Michael Bouchard said in disclosing that detail at a news conference Tuesday, four days after three children were found living in what has been described as “deplorable” squalor in a Pontiac condominium.
“All of us are asking, ‘How the heck did this happen? … How did no one know?’ ” said Bouchard, noting he also grapples with why and how the mother left her children. At the end of the day, he said, the answers “will never satisfy any of us”
Bouchard disclosed several new details Tuesday about the harrowing case that has made national headlines and stunned the community of Pontiac, especially given the nearly five years that the children — ages 12, 13, and 15 — were forced to live in rooms covered in feces, garbage and mold. By the time police found them on Friday, the toilet was not working, and the tub had feces in it, Bouchard said.
“You wouldn’t do this to an animal, let alone your child,” Bouchard said at one point, later stressing: “That’s the kind of situation these poor kids had been living in … not just for hours or days, for years.”
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Few details were disclosed about the children’s mother, who was arrested Friday and is currently housed in the Oakland County Jail. Her case has been forwarded to the Oakland County Prosecutor’s Office for possible charges.
“The conditions these children were living in were unspeakably horrific,” Oakland County Prosecutor Karen McDonald said in a statement Tuesday. “Right now, this case is a top priority. Our team is urgently working to process the evidence and make charging decisions. While it is important to move quickly, we must also be thorough to fully understand what happened in that house and ensure justice is done for these three children.”
Meanwhile, Bouchard disclosed several new details about the case, including:
- The children’s father had previously been in prison and had no contact with them. After he got out, he tried to reconnect and filed for visitation. But the mom still wouldn’t let him see the children under a consent agreement reached in 2022. By then, the children were already living alone. Their mother had abandoned them in between the spring and summer of 2020.
- The last time the mom left any hygiene products was in 2020 — in the height of the pandemic — when she dropped off trash bags, gloves and Febreze. Toward the end, the kids were left a loaf of bread that was supposed to last them for three to four days.
- The other people who were dropping off food once a week — other than the mom — were employees who worked for food delivery services, “like an Instacart or a DoorDash” said Bouchard, noting: “None of the people that were coming to the house had any awareness that there were kids inside, or the situation in which they were delivering to.”
- The children have already started making some progress since being rescued by sheriff’s deputies on Friday. They have new clothing and basic hygiene. “The little girl was talking quite a bit,” Bouchard said.
- While the children in this case received no schooling since their abandonment, Bouchard offered new information to help explain how the children fell off the schools’ radar. He said “a school district in this case received a request for records from another school in Pontiac, but no verification the children ever moved to that school and so at some point when they didn’t show up, they were just dropped off the enrollment of the school that sent the transcripts, so no one knew that they were nowhere.” According to the sheriff’s office, a charter school had requested transcripts from the Pontiac School District, which could not be immediately reached for comment. This case prompted Bouchard to call for changes in state law that would require a school to get written confirmation that a child is enrolled in another school before dropping that child from its enrollment.
‘Why couldn’t the neighbors smell that?’
Among those stunned and devastated by the children’s plight is 60-year-old Ernest Berry, who has lived for 10 years in the Lydia Lane condo complex where the children were discovered. He says Lydia Lane is typically a quiet street where bad things rarely happen. But when they do, he says, they’re “really, really bad.”
Five years ago, Berry’s son witnessed a fatal shooting in the condo below his unit on the quaint Pontiac street. He had to testify against the killer, who was convicted at trial of fatally shooting a 20-year-old West Bloomfield man who had gone to the condo to collect his sister’s belongings following a breakup with her boyfriend. A fight ensued, and the boyfriend killed the brother, landing him in prison for 35 to 60 years for his crime.
The following years were uneventful at the Village Stonegate Condo community on Lydia Lane. Then came Friday’s discovery of three children living alone, hiding out in a 1,300-square-foot condo that on the outside looks just like its counterparts on the charming tree-lined street.
“It’s mind boggling. … I can’t wrap my brain around it,” said Berry, who lives 10 units down from where the children were living. “I wish I could have seen them walk out of the house.”
But he didn’t see anything, said Berry. And apparently, nobody else did, either, which gnaws at Berry. He’s a special education teacher. Looking out for vulnerable children comes natural to him. So how, he wonders, could three children be living in such conditions so close by, and nobody notice?
“Why couldn’t the neighbors smell that? … I know that place had to smell really bad,” said Berry, who has lots of questions. “And what about lights, gas and water?”
It’s all too much for Berry to process, as he racks his brain, trying to remember “if I’ve seen these kids out walking. There’s not a lot of kids over there.”
And did they ever go looking for help?
“The kids never came out and never knocked (on) a neighbor’s door? Or did they just stay in the house? … Were they in that much fear?” said Berry. “It was kept so secret.”
How the children got discovered
The plight of the children came to light on Friday, when the sheriff’s office received a call from a landlord, who told deputies that he hadn’t received rent since October, or heard from the mom since December, and was concerned something may have happened.
So investigators made a welfare check to the condo at issue.
Upon their arrival, deputies found a house of horrors: Garbage was piled as high as 4 feet in some rooms, mold and human waste was found throughout. The girls had locked themselves in the bathroom but opened the door when asked.
The boy then explained their dire situation, telling deputies that his mother had abandoned him and his sisters in 2020 or 2021, and that they survived on food that their mother or someone else would leave on the porch, the sheriff’s office said. With no school to go to, police said, the children passed the time watching television or playing games.
When they were rescued, they were in soiled clothing, their hair was matted and their toenails were several inches long, making it difficult to walk, police said.
The children are now with a relative, placed there by Child Protective Services.
(This story was updated with additional information.)
Contact Tresa Baldas: [email protected]
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