4 Kids, Baby Found Abandoned In Cockroach-Infested Apartment; Mom Arrested

A 30-year-old woman in Texas is facing a child endangerment charge after her children were found alone in an apartment filled with trash and cockroaches, police said.

Members of the Houston Police Department (HPD) were performing a welfare check at the Casa Grande Apartments just off the Gulf Freeway and Monroe Drive Tuesday evening when they found five children home alone, ABC13 reported.

The kids, aged 1, 5, 7, 9 and 11, had been left alone without food, water or electricity for at least five hours, court filings alleged.

Officers had to climb through a window to get into the apartment, which had a boarded-up back window and a front door that was blocked shut with a table, according to police.

"The home was filthy with gnats, roaches and flies throughout the residence. There were trash bags filled with insects in the living room leading to the kitchen," an officer said in court.

The apartment's blocked entries posed a fire hazard, according to court documents.

All five children were removed from the apartment and taken to Texas Children's Hospital to be checked out, police said.

Their mother, Charlotte Sharee Williams, was arrested upon her return to the residence. She was later charged with endangering a child with intent to return.

Williams remained jailed Thursday on a $20,000 bond.

Meanwhile, her children were checked out from the hospital and are now staying with relatives, the HPD said.

The kids reportedly did not attend school. Neighbors last saw them outside two months ago when they were playing in the courtyard at 3 a.m.

In a similar story, a 26-year-old woman in Indiana was arrested February after her infant son died of COVID-19 while under the care of his older siblings.

Madelissa Flores, of Indianapolis, was charged with neglect over the death of her 3-month-old son.

The child was spotted by local police during a welfare check and taken to a hospital, but he later died.

Complications from the boy's COVID-19 infection caused the death, an autopsy determined.

Prior to his death, the infant was "alone in the dark house, screaming with no adults in sight," after Flores left him and his 7- and 9-year-old siblings at the residence, neighbors told police.

Flores told authorities that she left her three children alone because she was a "single mom that is under a lot of stress and needed to talk to someone," court papers showed.

She was slapped with two charges of neglect of a dependent resulting in catastrophic injury and one charge of neglect of a dependent over the death of her child.

The U.S. has reported a total of 81,492,170 COVID-19 cases and 994,187 virus-related deaths since the start of the pandemic, according to data provided by the CDC.