Sooner State law enforcement officials say that an Oklahoma couple is in jail for letting their young children live in a depressing state of squalor and actual feces inside their residence.
Records from the Oklahoma County Detention Center show that Dakota Rain Dodd, 24, and Aubrianna Jewelyn Willow Freeman, 22, are each charged with five counts of child maltreatment.
Authorities claim that the children’s living circumstances were cruelly dirty beyond what was considered sanitary.
The couple’s two boys, ages three and four, are reported to have been discovered confined inside a bedroom of their Greenvale Road residence, which is located close to Lytle Park in the western portion of Oklahoma City.
According to the police, they attended to a welfare check when they received a call at the house. According to a police report acquired by Law&Crime, Dodd seemed to have “redness and marks” on his face when he answered the door at around 11:15 a.m. on the day in issue, as if he had just been roused from sleep.
According to the attending officer’s police report, the father of the children initially claimed to be the only one home but later acknowledged that his two sons were upstairs when prompted.
Additionally, the police claim that the interior had frightening sights and nearly intolerable odors.
“Dodd again reiterated that the boys were upstairs and offered to go get them for me,” an officer wrote. “I asked if I could go with him, and he said I could. I was standing just inside the door of the home, and I could see the house was extremely unkempt. There was filth everywhere, food all over the table, walls, and floors. The odor inside the house was very strong; it smelled like garbage and feces.”
It is said that Dodd called Freeman to inform her of the situation as the father and the police were getting ready to head upstairs. The mother of the boys was saying, “The f—ing cops are at my door; we need to go,” over the phone, according to the officer’s report.
Dodd moved quickly, according to the police, as if he was attempting to “beat” the responding officer to the top of the stairwell.
“Dodd opened the door after shaking/moving the doorknob as if it was locked,” the officer wrote in the report. “Once the door opened, I was struck with a smell that made my stomach turn and my eyes water. I observed two young boys who were entirely naked immediately come out of the room as if they had been standing at the door waiting or trying to get out. The boys were both extremely dirty, covered in feces on their faces, hands, bodies, legs, and feet.”
The kids were then led downstairs, according to the police. Dodd allegedly continued by saying he “had intended” to wash the kids’ excrement off the walls “with paint” and give them showers.
A large amount of the law enforcement story—sometimes whole paragraphs—is redacted in the police report.
The narrative picks up: “I entered the room and was hit with a stench of urine and feces that was so strong I struggled to not vomit. There was feces all over the walls, floors, built in sink area, and windows.”
The next few pages of the document are mostly censored, with the exception of a section wherein police remove a booster seat from the residence so that one of the kids can be taken with his siblings. The two boys smeared in feces were not alone in the house, according to the police, as there was also an 11-month-old baby girl.
“Feces on the walls, feces on the kids. It was a completely disgusting scene,” Oklahoma City Police MSgt. Gary Knight told Oklahoma City-based ABC affiliate KOCO.” When they went inside, the officers described almost becoming overcome by the smell of feces and urine inside the residence.”
According to the TV station, Dodd informed police authorities that the boys were confined to the squalid bedroom for twelve hours every day.
Although witness information is not included in the police report itself, one of the Dodd-Freeman family’s neighbors recently spoke with KWTV, a CBS station in Oklahoma City, about her efforts on behalf of the children.
“I’d go by that window and see them little boys naked in it, they looked at me as if to say help me,” the neighbor said. “They would have dookie all over their face, hands, mouth.”
The neighbor told the TV station that police later entered the unit while dressed in white hazmat suits.
According to police, the three kids are currently under the care of state child welfare officials.
On September 12, Dodd and Freeman were taken into custody, according to jail logs. Oklahoma County court records show that neither defendant presently has a record counsel. Notably, prosecutors listed Freeman’s middle name as “Marie” in the official case that was brought against her.
According to a representative for the Oklahoma County District Attorney’s Office, the cases against the two defendants have not yet been submitted to prosecutors for official charges, Law&Crime learned.
Currently, the amount of both of their bonds is $250,000.