Police told NBC’s WLWT-5 that they’d received a call reporting a young boy wandering the streets of downtown Franklin, Ohio, alone.
The attending officer, Steve Dunham, said the young boy told him he was trying to sell his stuffed toy so that he could eat. The officer reports that the boy said he had not eaten for several days.
“It broke my heart,” he told the news channel.
In an act of kindness, the officer took the child to a nearby Subway restaurant and fed him, before returning with him to the Franklin Police Department.
The two officers, Amanda Myers and Kyle O’Neal, who were sent to the child’s home, said they found the house to be full of “garbage, cat urine and liquor bottles”, according, to the Journal News.
In her initial report Officer Myer wrote: “[The parents created] a substantial risk of health and safety by neglecting the cleanliness in the residence, having a large amount of bugs and spoiled food throughout the residence, not having properly prepared and packaged food for the minor to eat, and allowing a seven-year-old child to wander from the residence without their permission or knowledge, in an attempt to locate food.”
The Journal News reports the boy’s parents, Tammy and Michael Bethel of Ohio, did not realise their seven-year-old son was not in the house.
The Bethels, who are also parents of three other boys, have been charged with five counts each of child endangerment.
Both have pleaded not guilty to the charges, according to AP.
The other children have been placed into care with relatives, and a court order is in place preventing the parents from having any contact, WLWT-5 reports.
