Poor babies

mckayleesmom wrote: What I would like to know is why the people that lived by them and witnessed this neglect didn't call and report them?. Why would you not call and turn them in?

4 Adults Arrested After Children Found In Squalor
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By MIKE WELLS mwells@tampatrib.com

Published: May 13, 2006

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SEFFNER - Drawn in the dust on a window screen at a run-down mobile home were letters 4 inches high, barely the width of a child's finger, spelling the words "I love you."

Inside, the four adults living at 6029 Black Dairy Road No. 17 had allowed the conditions to worsen from dirty to deplorable and dangerous, Hillsborough County investigators said. Animal and human waste covered floors. Dirty dishes and clothing lay among garbage, broken toys and rancid food.

All four of the children's caretakers were charged Thursday with felony child neglect. Sheriff's investigators said the victims are a 3-year-old girl and her three brothers, ages 5, 1 and 7 months.

Their mother, Crystal A. Chavez, 22, and her live-in boyfriend, John Stockton Irick, 19, face four counts of child neglect.Irick's mother, Debra Boothe, 48, and her husband, Michael Boothe, 46, each face four counts of child neglect and four counts of failure to report child abuse.

All four remained at Orient Road Jail late Friday on bail ranging from $26,500 to $38,000.

Flies Everywhere
Investigators in their arrest report gave this account of what they discovered in the mobile home:

Deputies Eric Powell and Bryan Bennett arrived at the mobile home at 2 p.m. Thursday to arrest Chavez on a warrant charging her with driving with a suspended license.

Stepping inside the home, deputies saw animal and human waste embedded in the carpets. Flies buzzed everywhere.

Chavez was napping under an air conditioner in a bedroom. In the crib next to her, the 7-month-old played with a plastic bag.

The deputies woke her and asked where the other children were. Chavez pointed to a bedroom at the back of the mobile home.

Bennett walked down a hallway to the door, which was tied shut with red speaker wire stretched from the knob to another knob on the bathroom door. A child could not have opened the bedroom door from the inside, deputies said.

When Bennett untied the wire and opened the door, he was overwhelmed by the smell of urine and waste, he wrote in his report.

The windows were shut, and the air was hot. The room had an air conditioner that didn't work. A boy and girl stood before him, wearing no clothes and sweating profusely.

The floor was covered in feces, trash and broken toys. A television faced two soiled twin beds that had no sheets.

The oldest boy was sleeping, wearing only a long-sleeved T-shirt and covered with flies.

Bennett and Powell took the children outside and arrested the adults, all of whom were in the mobile home when the deputies arrived. Outside, one of the deputies engaged the children in conversation while the other radioed for help.

Michael Boothe told deputies he and his wife had been staying with Chavez and Irick for about two weeks. They live in Salt Lake City and came to Seffner looking for work, the arrest report stated.

The adults spent the night in jail and appeared before a judge there Friday morning. The state Department of Children & Families took custody of the children.

DCF spokesman Andy Ritter said he could not comment on the investigation because of privacy laws.

In general, he said, children rescued from such conditions are examined for medical problems, interviewed and, in ideal conditions, placed with a relative or family friend.

"The last option is to put them in a foster home," Ritter said.

Polite, Starved For Attention
Neighbor Tami McDougal said Chavez and Irick moved into the mobile home about six months ago. She said she often heard them shouting at each other.

The 5-year-old boy "liked to play with my nephew," McDougal said. "He always knocked and waited at the bottom of my steps. He was real polite."

Another neighbor, Kelly Miller, said she also heard screaming and other commotion coming from the mobile home.

"When I saw the cops, I wasn't surprised. You name it, and you'd hear it coming out of there."

She said she once knocked on the family's door, and the 3-year-old girl answered wearing no clothes, her toes covered with cat waste.

The children were starving for attention, she said.

"I'd be out taking a walk, and they'd come up and do anything they could to get your attention," she said.

Hillsborough Fire Rescue spokesman Ray Yeakley said his agency encountered the family in July 2004, when the oldest son played with a lighter and burned down a mobile home where they lived on Pine Street in Seffner.

AlexsPajamaMama replied: How sickening

BAC'sMom replied: don't get me started.

C&K*s Mommie replied: Sounds like something out of a movie... simple unbelievable!

That breaks my heart, and keeps it keeps on breaking.

I hope that those children go on to have a semblance of a good childhood, and their memories of this torture are far far from being known again. Lots of love wishes for those precious babies, all four of them.

mckayleesmom replied: It just angers me so..The neighbors saying they could hear screaming and fighting all the time, the kids answering the door naked with cat waste on them and they think NOTHING of it?...What is wrong with people? Don't you have the right as a human being to report that?

lisar replied: 2 words

" HANG THEM"

C&K*s Mommie replied: Oh and if those so called parents and grandparents could only be treated a fraction of the way they mistreated and abused those precious babies....

I hope they are charged with every possible charge imaginable, and get the max out of each one. And then the other prisoners catch wind of their abuse to the kids, and those other prisoners exact their own revenge on them!

luvmykids replied:
You not only have the right to, but the responsibility to if you ask me. And those innocent children have rights that have been so horrifically violated by those who were supposed to care for them. sick.

kit_kats_mom replied: Yep. That's in my neighborhood...well not my neighborhood but in the same county. I saw it on our local news last night. DH said "what's worse the gators or the humans?"

It makes me sick.

Cece00 replied: That is SO f-in disgusting. Seriously, it makes me want to go steam clean my carpets and I have CLEAN CARPETS, I clean them all of the time. I cant stand for my house to smell like cooked food, how could they stand to live with the smell of CRAP everywhere??

God, it makes me want to go take those poor children & wash them & love on them...my kids are 4, 3 and 7 months and I absolutely CAN NOT imagine making them live like that.

Sick.

Hillbilly Housewife replied:

That would be an example of who WOULDN'T get one of them "child bearing licences" from DV's post

Kaitlin'smom replied: I wish I coudl take them in and show then what love is.



I just cant express my emotions when I hear something like this.

ashtonsmama replied:
That makes me want to puke and go beat those so called "parents" down. They dont' deserve those precious babies.