A Michigan mother was taken into custody after police said her two special-needs children were left alone for several days.
Krystal Farmer, 35, faces two counts of child abandonment, four counts of child abuse, and a charge of lying to police after officers with the Flint Township Police Department said they discovered her two special-needs children alone inside their Flint, Michigan, home on Feb. 18. In a Facebook post, the department said the house was filled with trash, the walls were smeared with human waste, and one of the young boys was eating “raw, spoiled meat.” The other boy was hiding on a bedroom floor.
According to police, a concerned neighbor called 911 and asked for a welfare check at the home. Local CBS affiliate WNEM spoke with a neighbor, Christy Ogles-Campbell, who told the station she had suspected something was happening at the house “at least since September.” After learning about the condition of the home and the children, she said, “I never ever could have imagined that that was actually what was going on in that house.”
Police said Farmer lied when they questioned her, but investigators dismantled her story and determined she had left the two boys alone at home for days. Body camera footage released by the department shows the moment officers found the boys—one of them naked and the other covered in feces. No adults were present in the home at the time.
While inside the home, police said they saw the floor buried in trash “so thickly” that officers “couldn’t take a normal step.” A faucet had been left running and was overflowing onto the floor. Police said, “It was a house that had been reduced to survival conditions.”
In a Facebook post, Flint police said the boys are “now safe” because one neighbor “spoke up.”
According to online court records, a bond order was issued on Monday, but details about Farmer’s bond amount or incarceration status were not available.
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