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The child had been dead for a year.
By Isaac Serna-Diez — Written on Oct 27, 2021
A mother and her boyfriend have been arrested and charged over the death of a nine year old whose skeletal remains were found inside a Houston apartment along with three other surviving siblings.
This week, a 15-year-old boy in Harris County, Texas, made a phone call to the police and told them that his 9-year-old brother had been dead for over a year and that his body was in the apartment he had been left in along with his two siblings.
According to the 15-year-old, his mother and her boyfriend hadn’t lived with him and his two siblings, ages 10 and 7, for months.
Bryan Coulter and Gloria Williams have been charged over the death.
Coulter, the 32-year-old boyfriend of the dead child’s mother, was charged with murder on Tuesday.
Williams, 36, was charged with felony injury to a child by omission, failure to provide medical care and failure to provide adequate supervision.
The child was killed in a violent homicide.
The Harris County Institute of Forensic Sciences in Houston, which conducted an autopsy on the remains of the child, listed the primary cause of death as “homicidal violence with multiple blunt force injuries."
The surviving children are reported to have been "fending for themselves" in an apartment with no power.
Neighbors had been allowing the 15-year-old to charge his phone and had been occasionally buying food for the family.
The children had not attended school since May 2020 and school officials attempted an unsuccessful home visit in September 2020.
Neighbors had raised concerns about the children.
One of the next-door neighbors, who wished to remain anonymous, told ABC13 that she had been complaining about an awful smell for months.
Whenever she told the front office about the smell they never did anything about it, and sometimes it got so bad that she had to leave the air conditioner off so the smell wouldn’t come into her apartment.
She said that she moved into the apartment complex, City Parc II at West Oaks Apartments, about 18 months ago and the smell appeared about four or five months into her living there.
The next-door neighbor said that she thought the apartment was abandoned and had no idea that anybody had been in there.
When the deputies arrived on the scene, they found the skeletal remains of the brother that the 15-year-old boy mentioned, as well as the surviving siblings who appeared to have been abandoned by their parents.
"[We're] Connecting all the dots at this point, it appears [the kids] were in there while the body was deteriorating," said Harris County Sheriff, Ed Gonzalez, “I have been in this business a long time, and never saw anything like this.”
During a news briefing Sunday afternoon, Gonzalez called the situation “horrific” after seeing how they had been living for over a year, and sent the boys to the hospital after noticing clear signs of malnourishment.
"To ensure the safety of the children, the Department of Family and Protective Services is seeking emergency custody of the three boys,” Child Protective Services (CPS) released in a statement. “Child Protective Services does have history with the family, but there was no active CPS investigation at the time the children were discovered alone in their apartment.”
Isaac Serna-Diez is a writer who focuses on entertainment and news, social justice, and politics. Follow him on Twitter here.