Texas Division of Public Security
A Texas mom deserted her two younger children in a squalid motel room for weeks on finish, leaving them with little meals and pulling her 12-year-old daughter from faculty to take care of her 1-year-old brother full-time, based on courtroom filings reviewed by The Day by day Beast.
Ashli Rene Lock, 37, is charged with felony baby abandonment by authorities after police found the youngsters dwelling alone in their very own filth at a High quality Inn in Houston.
“Officers famous that each of the youngsters appeared malnourished and filthy,” states a charging doc filed Thursday by the Harris County District Lawyer’s Workplace. “The one yr outdated was sleeping in a dirty diaper.”
The 12-year-old woman instructed cops that she had “not left this resort room in a couple of month,” the courtroom submitting says. She additionally claimed Lock, who works as a bartender, “has not supplied her with satisfactory meals for her child brother, so she feeds him mac and cheese.”
Officers described the dwelling area as “one thing resembling a Marvin Zindler impressed nightmare of unsanitary dwelling circumstances, with damaged bottles on the ground, medication in plain view, slime within the fridge and moldy meals haphazardly strewn all through. To cite the late Mr. Zindler, ‘it is hell to be poor.’ It's even worse to be a poor and uncared for baby.”
Zindler, who died in 2007, was a crusading journalist who uncovered scams, corruption, and abuse.
“She stated that typically her mom comes residence from work, typically not,” the submitting continues. “The twelve yr outdated didn't have her mom's telephone quantity and had no significant method of contacting her mom within the occasion of an emergency.”
The unidentified 12-year-old additionally confirmed cops footage of accidents she stated she sustained from Lock hitting her. She stated Lock had taken her out of college as a way to take care of the 1-year-old boy. The case was first reported by native outlet Fox 26.
Final October, one other Houston mother was charged with abandoning her three youngsters, ages 7, 10, and 15 in a fetid residence alongside the rotting corpse of their 8-year-old brother. Police stated the 8-year-old had been lifeless for a full yr once they discovered his skeletal stays in one of many residence’s bedrooms. When officers arrived, the 15-year-old instructed them his mom and her boyfriend hadn’t been dwelling there for months, and that they have been surviving due to a pleasant neighbor who introduced them meals.
Lock, who in 2016 was convicted of felony theft and felony drug possession two years later, presently has a pending DWI case making its method by way of the courtroom system, based on a separate submitting within the case. Youngster Protecting Providers is now concerned and the children have been positioned with different household, it states.
In response to a monetary standing submitting, Lock earns $1,000 a month with bills of $1,900, and reported whole belongings of $2 money when she was arrested. Prosecutors requested for $75,000 bond; Lock was launched after posting $1,500, courtroom paperwork say.
Lock doesn't but have a lawyer listed in courtroom data and was unable to be reached on Saturday.