Starving Children Locked in Dog Cage Saved by Rescuers
Abuse is always a horrifying thing to encounter. But there’s something particularly awful when individuals direct evil toward a child. Those little lives are so vulnerable.
And it’s even worse when the person perpetrating the wrongdoing is supposed to serve as a protector. That’s exactly what happened in North Texas.
According to WFAA, the sad story began on Feb. 12 in Decatur, Texas, when police received a domestic violence call. After arriving, Sheriff Lane Akin of the Wise County Sheriff’s Department said that deputies discovered a man covered with cuts.
Andrew Fabila’s face had been terribly battered. Scratches clustered around his cheeks and trailed down the right side of his neck.
A long scrape descended from between his eyebrows down his nose. It seemed that his partner, a woman named Paige Harkins, had reacted violently during an argument.
However, that was nothing compared to what investigators discovered at the property. Heavy.com reported that Fabila and Harkins had been living inside a metal shop building.
Wise County Sheriff’s Department chief deputy Craig Johnson said, “It’s filthy inside the residence. It’s pretty well cluttered.”
Police also discovered something strange about the refrigerator. The couple had placed straps on the appliance, keeping it securely shut so that little hands couldn’t pry it open.
And there were little hands that certainly wanted two. Officers discovered four children ranging in age from 1 to 5 on the property.
All of the kids were covered in feces. They also seemed malnourished.
“This is at the top of the list of worst cases as far as children and how they’re kept, how well they’re kept, taken care of,” Johnson said.
“One [child] was laying on a blanket, and one was laying on a little toddler bed,” he added. “All of them were filthy, covered in fecal material and appeared to be in a state of neglect.”
More shocking was where the police found the remaining two kids. They were locked inside of a dog cage in a barn on the property.
When the police discovered them, the children stated that they were thirsty and wanted food. And food had been something their parents had kept from them.
Fabila and Harkins are now facing four counts of child endangerment.
Thankfully, police were able to intervene in time and the children were taken to the hospital for evaluation.
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