A Texas woman was arrested and charged with child abandonment and endangerment after her three-year-old daughter was found walking around their apartment complex alone on Saturday. And as if that’s not terrible enough, the little girl was barefoot, dirty and told police officers that she “needed beer” when they found her.
Reports allege that the mother, Shauna Bennett, kept a filthy home and left her daughter alone while she passed out on a bunk bed. When officers arrived at the apartment after being called by concerned neighbors who spotted her daughter wandering about the courtyard, they walked into a disgusting apartment overrun by cockroaches and filled with dirty dishes.
“There were piles of dirty and moldy dishes on the counter, stove, and sink,” Lubbock police wrote in their report. “There was trash on the floor and counter. There were cockroaches absolutely everywhere. The kitchen was in no way sanitary or functional.”
They also described the woman’s daughter as “extremely dirty and looked as though she hadn’t been bathed in a while.” The little girl was also covered in bed bug bites and repeatedly told officers she was hungry.
Despite the poor living conditions, neighbor Keith Graves calls Bennett’s arrest a “misunderstanding” and said that Bennett is a hardworking single mother. “It could’ve been cleaned a little bit better, but Shauna was doing the best that she could under the circumstances she was in.”
Bennett is currently free on $15,000 bond. Her daughter has been placed with Child Protective Services.
(Via New York Daily News, Fox 34)