Neighbours are now speaking out.
Further details have emerged in
the case of three children found abandoned in a Texas apartment alongside their brother's skeletal remains.
The three boys, one aged 15 and the other two both under 10, were found in an apartment in Houston on Sunday alongside their 9-year-old brother's remains.
The boys' mother, 35-year-old Gloria Williams, and her boyfriend, 31-year-old Brian Coulter, were arrested late Tuesday.
Williams faces charges of failure to provide medical care and adequate supervision as well as injury to a child by omission, while Coulter is charged with felony murder, according to Harris County Sheriff Ed Gonzalez.
The "horrific situation" was only discovered by authorities when the 15-year-old himself called police to the home over the weekend, despite the boys
reportedly not being enrolled in school since May 2020 and a neighbour's complaint about a consistently foul odour coming from the apartment.
Neighbours have now spoken out and offered more insight into how the boys survived alone, claiming they helped the 15-year-old but were completely unaware he was living with two other kids.
"One day he came down and knocked down on my door and asked if I could charge his phone. So I charged the phone. From there I built a bond with him," neighbour Trevor Thompson
told Houston's KTRK-TV.
Another neighbour, Erica Chapman, added that the teen mostly relied on neighbours for food.
"I noticed his mom, a few times, would come and park, and he would run down and grab like noodles, drinks and chips and run back up," she said.
She didn't think this wasn't enough food, so she offered the teen more – but he would never accept cooked food.
"He would not eat anything that you made," Chapman continued. "You would have to buy it – like it had to be a salad that was closed from the store or a pizza. Fruit still had to be in a bag."
Thompson said the same: "He wouldn't take cooked foods. He would take fruits and snacks."
Neither neighbour was aware the teen had been living with his brothers, nor that a decomposing body was in the apartment – but Thompson was confused one day when the teen used the pronoun "we" rather than "I."
"I asked, 'Did you like the pizza?' And he asked, 'The first pizza we had?'" Thompson said. "That made me wonder, why would he say, 'we?'"
"After finding out what happened [on Sunday], I think he was more nervous and scared," Chapman said. "[He might have thought] 'Are they going to blame me for this? Are my parents going to punish me for this?' Maybe his parents told him they would be separated if he told anyone."
The mother of the children and her boyfriend were found late Sunday night and were interviewed and released without charge as authorities awaited autopsy results on the body of the 9-year-old.
Fox News also reports that the mother lived just 15 minutes away from the apartment the boys were found in. A neighbour of the mother said she frequently saw herself and her boyfriend come and go, but she "never saw any children. None."
Doctors examined all three children this week and found they were malnourished, and that the 7-year-old had facial fractures.
An investigation is ongoing and the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services is currently seeking emergency custody of the boys.
If you have been affected by any of the details of this article, you can contact Childline on 1800 66 66 66.
