A Connecticut mother was arrested after leaving her children — all under the age of 12 — alone in their smelly home, which was overrun with human feces and rotting food, according to police.
Lindsey Powell allegedly subjected her three daughters and son to horrific conditions inside their Vernon apartment after abandoning them on Nov. 8, an arrest warrant was released to local media on Tuesday.
When an officer arrived at the home after receiving a call from a concerned neighbor, the 11-year-old daughter opened the door with her three younger siblings behind her and naked, CT Insider reported, citing police documents.
“I smelled cat urine, rotting food, and feces,” the officer on the scene later wrote, according to the outlet.
“It was difficult to stand in the doorway because the bad smell coming from inside the apartment was burning my nose.”
The living room and kitchen had trash, dirt and rotting food strewn on the floor, and the kitchen floor was littered with human and cat feces, the arrest warrant states.
The only items in the fridge were expired milk and a bottle of juice.
The pull-out sofa that the kids sleep on has a dirty guinea pig cage with a guinea pig inside; The bedrooms did not have any beds.
“I had difficulty standing in the bedroom for more than a few seconds due to this odor,” the office reportedly wrote.
“However, the children entered that bedroom without a problem. I thought the children had become blinded by the stench in the bedroom.
At one point, he saw one of the children “eating old pasta from the floor.”
The kids ate frozen pizza the night before and then ate some the next morning before they started looking for more food.
When a friend called Powell, she claimed she would be back soon, but she never showed up. The officer stayed with the children for seven hours — and a group of neighbors also came to offer the children food — before the state Department of Children and Families took over.
Powell, who at one point threatened to commit suicide to a family member, was later tracked down to Poughkeepsie and arrested.
She was returned to Connecticut on Monday to face four charges of risk of injury to a minor, the newspaper reported.
