Center Grove-area parents are facing criminal charges after police found two young children alone in a home without electricity or food and in conditions that officers described as unsanitary.
The mother, Kila Marie Hill, 37, 1085 S. Paddock Road, was arrested on a charge of neglect of a dependent late last week.
The father, Richard S. Hill, is wanted to face a charge of neglect of a dependent. He has not been located.
A woman came to the Johnson County Sheriff’s Office on June 3 to report that her daughter’s teen-age friend had not seen her mother in more than a week, according to a report from the Johnson County Sheriff’s Office.
The teen told police that she had not seen her parents and did not know where her three younger siblings, ages 3 to 8, were or if they were being fed. The parents of the girl did not respond to multiple calls from police, the report said.
Police went to the family’s last known address on County Line Road in Greenwood, according to the report.
An officer arrived at the home on June 3 and found two young children, ages 5 and 3, home alone, according to a probable cause affidavit filed in Johnson County Circuit Court. The electricity to the home in the Center Grove Estates neighborhood had been off for a month, the report said.
The children walked outside when the deputy arrived, and told him that they had been staying home alone.
The children told police that they had not had anything to eat and when the deputy offered to make them a sandwich, they said the meat in the home was rotten and that there was not anything to eat in the home, the affidavit said. The five-year-old told him the inside of the refrigerator was nasty, and warned him not to look in it, the report said.
The home was dirty and unsanitary and did not have electricity, according to the affidavit.
The children told officers that they had stayed the night with a neighbor and had eaten at the neighbor’s house the day before, the affidavit said.
Piles of dirty clothes were all over the home, bologna was left out and was rotting, a mattress in the kitchen was dirty and stained, gnats and flies were flying around the home and the refrigerator smelled like rotten food, the affidavit said.
A teen-age neighbor told police she had watched the children the day before and that the children were walking between the two homes because the children were homesick.
It is unclear how long the children had been alone in the home when police arrived, said Major Andy Fisher of the Johnson County Sheriff’s Office.
When police reached Kila Hill, she told them she was aware her teenage daughter was staying with a friend and that the other children were supposed to be watched by the neighbor. Hill said she never gave the neighbor a concrete time for coming home, the affidavit said.
The Department of Child Services took custody of the children and an arrest warrant has been issued for the children’s father, Fisher said.
Kila Hill was arrested and taken to the Johnson County Jail, where she was held on $4,800 bond.
