Watch: Police Rescue Children in Locked Cage: 'Dealing with a Monster'
Six children were rescued last month from what the media have dubbed a “house of horrors,” a Las Vegas extended-stay hotel unit where some of them were found padlocked in a metal dog kennel and all appeared to have been abused.
A doctor told police one of the children, an 11-year-old boy, was near death when he was brought to the hospital, the Las Vegas Review-Journal reported Tuesday.
A nurse who cared for the boy was quoted in a police report as calling it “the worst case of abuse she has seen in 13 years,” according to the news outlet.
The children’s father, 31-year-old Travis Doss, and their stepmother, 33-year-old Amanda Stamper, were arrested June 11 after police entered their apartment and discovered the children, KLAS-TV in Las Vegas reported.
The station obtained bodycam video of the encounter, in which officers spent about 15 minutes persuading the fearful children to open the door.
When authorities finally entered, they found the six children — ages 11 and under — and several dogs in the unit, with two boys crammed into the padlocked cage.
WARNING: The following video and accompanying narrative contain scenes and descriptions that some may find disturbing.
Doss was indicted July 13 by a grand jury on several dozen felony charges, including 38 counts of child abuse, two counts of first-degree kidnapping, one count of sex trafficking and one count of living off of the earnings of a prostitute, according to KLAS.
Stamper was also indicted on seven counts of felony child abuse, but she insisted to reporters that she was a victim too.
“I’m sorry but I didn’t do it,” she told the TV news outlet. “I had no control over him.”
Stamper said Doss beat her as well as the children and controlled her through fear of violence.
“I was dealing with a monster,” she told KLAS.
“He would use my, my children, and my family,” Stamper said. “Like if I was ever to call the police, like, you know, go find my family and my kids.
“He’s just really a violent person.”
Stamper said she and Doss had moved from Atlanta to Las Vegas in 2018 and that he forced her to support him by working as a prostitute, according to the Review-Journal.
“She testified that she had a young child with Doss, and he would threaten to take the child away from her,” the report said.
Several years ago, she said, Doss gained custody of his six children and brought them to Las Vegas. Two of them attended school, Stamper said, but Doss later pulled them out.
A Las Vegas couple have been arrested after police responding to a 911 call found two children locked in a dog kennel, one of them so badly abused that doctors said he was on the verge of death. https://t.co/KPUaRNI6CD
— The Daily Beast (@thedailybeast) June 14, 2023
She said she was the one who called 911 the day the police came to their apartment.
“I just wanted them to be safe in the end, like, and I wanted everybody out of it,” Stamper told KLAS. “I just wanted him incarcerated. I just knew if he was incarcerated that everybody will be safe.”
Asked why she didn’t call the police sooner, she said, “I was scared for my life and my other kids and my family.”
“It’s hard for people to understand that unless you’re in that situation,” Stamper said.
The Review-Journal said she told police that Doss beat the children with extension cords, belts and a heavy metal wok.
A detective told the grand jury that Stamper admitted the children “have, quote, like a million marks on them.”
The New York Post reported that Doss told police after his arrest that he believed one of the children in the kennel was already dead.
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