Four children have been found alone in flat with a horrific stench from “rotting food and faeces”, reportedly said police.
Mum Lindsey Powell has been arrested after allegedly leaving her three daughters and a son in “deplorable” conditions at the apartment in Vernon, Connecticut, with a police officer saying the smell “was burning my nostrils”.
It is understood that police went to the home due to call from a worried neighbour and an 11-year-old daughter opened the door with her siblings, aged six, four and three, naked behind her.
The concerned neighbour had filmed Powell leave the house at around 4am that morning and then seen the 11-year-old walking around outside without shoes.
The flat was full of rubbish and excrement, according to a police report. Powell, 40, who allegedly left the children on November 8 and an arrest warrant was issued by police.
“I was hit with the smell of cat urine, rotting food and faeces. It was difficult to stand in the doorway because the stench originating from inside the apartment was burning my nostrils,” said Officer Gregory Webster, reported the CT Insider.
In the living room and kitchen there was a build up rubbish, rotting food as well as human and cat faeces. In the police report it said that there were flies and small bugs while in the fridge all that was there were out of date containers of milk and juice.
There was also a filthy guinea pig cage with the animal inside on a pull-out sofa while it is reported there were no beds in the apartment.
“I had difficulty standing in the bedroom for longer than a few seconds because of this smell,” the office reportedly wrote.
“The children, however, entered this bedroom without issue. I believed the children had become nose blind to the awful stench of the bedroom.” He added that he saw the kids “eating old pasta from the floor”.
Powell was then contacted by a friend but did not return to the flat with police waiting there for seven hours during which time neighbours brought round food for the children and then US social services took over. The mum was later tracked down and arrested, she faces four counts of risk of injury to a minor, the newspaper reported.