DECATUR, Texas – The Latest on four malnourished children found at a North Texas home, two locked in a dog cage (all times local):
5 p.m.
A North Texas couple is jailed without bond after four malnourished children were found in deplorable conditions at their rural home.
Wise County jail records show Andrew Joseph Fabila and Paige Isabow Harkings are each charged with four counts of criminal child endangerment. Both are 24. Harkings also is charged with one aggravated assault count.
Investigators found the children, all of whom are age 5 or younger, in a barn outside the family home and just feet away from plentiful food kept under lock and key. Two of the old children were locked in a 3-by-3-foot (90-by-90 centimeter) cage, while two younger children were found outside the cage but only partially clothed and smeared with feces and urine.
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3:50 p.m.
A sheriff says four malnourished children were found in a barn outside a rural North Texas home, just feet away from plentiful food kept under lock-and-key.
Wise County Sheriff Lane Akin did not return messages left by The Associated Press. However, he told The Dallas Morning News that deputies found the children while responding to a domestic disturbance call near Rhome, about 20 miles (32 kilometers) north of Fort Worth. Two were locked in 3-by-3-foot (90-by-90 centimeter) cages, while two younger children were found outside the cage but only partially clothed and smeared with feces and urine.
Initial reports quoted Akin as saying two children were found caged in the barn and two were found in the home.
The children were taken to Cook Children's Medical Center in Fort Worth, but a hospital spokeswoman declined to disclose their conditions.
Akin says the children's mother and a man at the home have been arrested on four counts each of child endangerment.
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2:15 p.m.
Sheriff's deputies discovered four malnourished children, including two locked inside a dog cage, when they responded to a domestic disturbance at a Northeast Texas home.
Wise County Sheriff Lane Akin says deputies found the children aged 5 and younger Tuesday morning at the home near Rhome, about 20 miles (32 kilometers) north of Fort Worth.
Akin says two of the children were inside, but that the deputies found two more in an outbuilding, crammed into the 3-by-3 feet (90-by-90 centimeter) cage.
Akin didn't describe the state of the children except that they were malnourished. They were taken to a hospital for evaluation.
He says the children's parents were home and that they had been fighting. The man had cuts to his face. Akin says they will be charged with child endangerment.
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