Two children, ages four and eight, lived in the back seat of a pick-up truck for the better part of a year in Fayetteville, Georgia and nothing was done. Until this week.
To protect the identities of the minor children and the safety of the people involved in this story, every name has been changed. But this is a true story.
You might remember when the first cold snap rolled around there was a viral post on local Facebook group, Life in the PTC Bubble, about a woman and two kids living in a truck in Fayetteville. The community sprang into action, ready to help get those kids into a hotel room, so that they wouldn’t freeze to death in the back of their mom’s pick-up truck. Hotel rooms were rented, gift cards were collected, but the mom, who we’ll call Annie, was skittish. Was it drugs? Mental illness?
The concerned citizens we spoke to think it was probably both. Annie had been parked with a camper and two trucks outside of home on a cul-de-sac off Gingercake Road in Fayetteville for the better part of a year. It was a home her parent’s rented. Due to domestic disturbances at the home, including a notable one confirmed by a report from the sheriff’s department, her parents no longer allowed her access to the home.
Then, because of the trash and mess that she was leaving on the property, including raw sewage from the camper, Annie’s parents were not allowed to renew their lease. So while her parents moved, Annie continued to live in the street. Annie, along with her trucks, a trailer containing dogs, and her two children, were still at the property—with no access to the bathrooms, no heat, and no running water for months.
The property manager at that home spoke to The Citizen. But none of the neighbors would grant an interview. Why? They were all afraid of Annie. Because the domestic disturbance she was cited for in November involved her pulling a gun on her own father.
In that incident, the police report said it became a “he said, she said” instance. He yelled. She yelled back. She pulled a gun. He put her in a chokehold. She bit him. It looks like all those things happened, but in different orders according to Annie and her father.
But the Sheriff’s report never referenced the bullet holes that Phil the property manager found in a window and in the brick of the home. After the incident, Sheriff’s deputies returned the gun to Annie, and neither she nor her father were charged with anything. No mention of the children was made in the report.
But the neighbors knew she had a gun. According to Phil and to a concerned citizen that we will call Cindy, over the last year, many of the neighbors called both DFACS and the Sheriff’s Department to report Annie, particularly to report potential neglect and/or abuse of her children.
Neighbors told Phil that the sheriff’s deputies would pull up, talk to Annie, and then leave without ever talking to the children or checking to see if they were okay. Whether it was because Annie was homeless with no address on record, or because various neighbors and concerned citizens were calling the non-emergency line, the Fayette County Sheriff’s Department has no record of those many many calls. And it’s possible that those requests were coming in from DFACS, not directly to the Sheriff’s Department from the neighbors.
Phil called DFACS no less than three times, finally trying the state number. That’s when he finally got communication back in the form of emails. Phil forwarded The Citizen a thread of email communication he had with DFACS in which they said they had closed the case. He told them that the children had no heat or running water, after DFACS wrote that “this case has been closed due to Fayette County PD not giving enough reason for us to take the children into custody.”
Phil wrote DFACS back in his third message in the string of requests, “They are still there on the street, sitting in the truck. It’s supposed to be very cold again tonight and tomorrow night. Neighbors and workers at the house next-door have said that they have not seen any law-enforcement or DFACS personnel. They also said that they have not seen the children leave the truck, although they have seen them through the window and confirmed that they were still indeed in the backseat.
“I think it’s unconscionable and outrageous that the CPS case was closed. I would be reaching out to someone else if anyone else had ever responded to any of my concerns or reports. Just to clarify, this is not a squatter situation. The lady and all of her stuff are on the street. My concern and that of the people living on the street is the welfare of the children who are in eminent danger of freezing to death and/or starving to death. All other complaints and reports that have been made have been in an effort to make something happen for the children.”
The Department of Family and Children’s Services has a policy about not speaking to the media about any open or possible case. So there’s no accountability that we could provide, apart from Phil’s sent email thread.
So what happens to this four-year-old girl who we will call Jenny and her eight-year-old brother, who we’ll call Jason? They get lost in the cracks of the system. Neighbors conjectured that they were being drugged since they would be covered with blankets and left to sleep in the back of the truck for fifteen to twenty hours at a time.
Cindy explained about the drug theory thinking it could be compounded with carbon monoxide poisoning from the truck, “When you think about trying to keep a 4-year-old in the backseat of a car for 15 and 20 hours. Phil said too, ‘Cindy, when your body gets that cold that you go to sleep.’ So it could have been a combination of all of that. But with her leaving them in that truck, and as paranoid as she is, she had to have drugged them, just like Casey Anthony used to do to that little girl she kept in the trunk. Because they’re not going to take a chance of them being awake opening the door and trying to get out or trying to call for help.” With no way to get out of the truck, there was no one to call for help, especially since the children did not go to school this last year.
Phil also said, “I determined it was extremely unlikely that there was any schooling happening at all, just based on the fact that the lady seemed to be mentally and emotionally unstable and also drunk and or high.”
After the cold snap and the family disappearing, not even taking their second night in the hotel that was paid for by the community, Cindy and Phil, the property manager at the parent’s former rental home, and a handful of concerned citizens were desperate to find these kids and make sure they were okay. The weather was still cold, there was snow and ice on the roads. The kids were in the wind.
So they came up with a plan. On January 12, Phil called Annie the mom offering her $50 in gift cards that had been collected by the community. He got her out to the Walmart parking lot, so that the police could be called for a wellness check on the kids.
Cindy, Phi and others called the Fayetteville Police to come to Walmart to check on these children. They were in a truck with painted over windows, exhaust blowing into the cab, and expired tags. But the Fayetteville Police were more concerned with Cindy, Phil and the other concerned citizens than they were with the kids. They pulled Cindy, Phil, and the other concerned citizen’s licenses, as Cindy begged them to call DFACS.
Cindy got on her cell phone with the Fayette County DFACS Director Holly Line to allow Line to explain to the officers how to put in an official request for a wellness check. And the officers ignored that request from Line, and let Annie, Jenny and Jason drive away without ever talking to the children or pulling them out of the truck. The officers also did not ticket the mother for her lack of car seats for the children or for the windows being blacked out on the truck.
Cindy was so upset by the situation that she contacted Governor Kemp’s state watchdog, the Office of the Child Advocate, to report on this situation. She also met with the Fayetteville Police Chief Gray, who gave her some excuses. She said, “I requested that Chief Gray review this situation and allow his officers to err on the side of caution when dealing with children in our community. I also requested that he make sure his officers are aware of the procedures regarding calling for a DFACS welfare check.”
Cindy and some of her friends drove all around the county trying to find Annie and the children as the temperature dropped into the teens. She contacted The Citizen, terrified that the children would freeze to death in the back of a truck parked in the woods somewhere.
The Office of the Child Advocate opened a case, according to Cindy, notifying her in writing. Perhaps it was their involvement that got the local DFACS office motivated to help Jenny and Jason.
Nearly a month later, as the weather warmed up, property manager Phil learned from their grandfather that the children had finally been placed into his custody.
It might come as a shock to some in Fayette County that there would be homeless children here, or cases of child neglect that get lost in the cracks of the system. But the system still can work, if citizens along with law enforcement and county DFACS work together to keep children safe. And it should work sooner than after more than a month of cold, cold Georgia nights.
The Fayette County Sheriff’s Department still wants cases of child neglect and abuse reported. Because the calls are recorded, The Citizen suggests calling 911 to report those.
