The three neglected children who were found abandoned in squalid conditions in a Houston home alongside the skeletal remains of their nine-year-old brother who had been dead for more than a year managed to survive thanks to help from a neighbor.
The children’s mother and her boyfriend were questioned and released by law enforcement officials. Child welfare services in Texas have also launched an investigation.
The mother and her boyfriend left the children alone for several months, according to law enforcement officials. Occasionally, the mother would return to bring the kids food.
The three children were taken to a hospital for treatment. An autopsy is being conducted on the fourth child to determine a cause of death.
An unidentified Good Samaritan who lived in a nearby apartment complex in Houston brought the three children food and charged their phones after the electricity was cut in their house, the Harris County Sheriff’s Department told The Daily Beast.
But another neighbor wondered why the person who brought them food didn't alert authorities beforehand regarding the neglect that the children were experiencing as well as the rotting corpse inside the home.
'If an adult was bringing them food to eat, they must have seen that child,' a local resident said.
Harris County Sheriff's Department officers are seen above at a Houston apartment complex on Sunday afternoon where three children were found in a neglected state
Investigators also found the decomposed body of a nine-year-old boy inside the apartment
Law enforcement officials said that the three children were given food by an unidentified neighbor
Law enforcement officials said that the neighbor was helping the three children - ages 7, 10, and 15 - for at least the last two weeks.
According to investigators, the 15-year-old said that the parents hadn’t been living at home for weeks, effectively abandoning the children to be on their own.
When police arrived to the home on Sunday afternoon, they found the brother’s skeletal remains out in the open, KPRC-TV reported.
The two younger boys appeared to be malnourished and ‘showed signs of physical injury,’ according to law enforcement officials.
‘It appears they were basically fending for each other,’ Harris County Sheriff Ed Gonzalez told reporters.
‘The older sibling was doing the best he could to take care of the others.’
In an update late Sunday, Gonzalez revealed that the children's mother and her boyfriend have been located and interviewed by homicide detectives.
On Monday, the sheriff announced that the couple was released without being arrested or charged with any crime. No explanation was provided for the decision to let the pair go at this time.
In response to a request for comment, a spokesperson for the sheriff's office
