Missouri mom arrested for locking her daughter in a closet
A Kansas City, Mo., mother is behind bars, accused of keeping her 10-year-old daughter locked in a closet, not letting her come out to eat, sleep or even go to the bathroom, ABC News reported.
The girl weighed just 32 pounds, and hospital records indicated that she has only gained 6 pounds since she was 4 or 5 years old, according to a police probable cause statement. The girl also suffers from "multiple healing skin injuries and failure to thrive," the statement said.
"She weighed a little over a third of what a 10-year-old should weigh," Kansas City Police Capt. Steve Young said. "We don't know how long or how frequently she's been in there [the closet], but it's clear she'd spent a significant amount of time in there."
Kansas City police met Missouri Children's Division workers outside the apartment building Friday morning after the division received a hotline call about a girl who was locked up and unable to eat or use the restroom.
When a division worker told two women outside the apartment that three children lived in the apartment, the neighbors said they had never seen the third child even though they'd lived there for "several years."
"We never knew of her the whole three years we've been down here," Kimberly Kelley, another neighbor, told ABC's affiliate in Kansas City, KMBC-TV. "She told us she only had two kids."
The girl's mother was charged with assault in the first degree, child abuse, and endangering the welfare of a child in the first degree, according to the criminal complaint. All three charges are felonies.