Three children, all 13 or younger, were found starved and imprisoned in their Rome, Georgia home, police said.
“I’ve never seen anything like this, where the children have been locked in the rooms at night,” Floyd County Police Sgt. Rusty Williams said. "I’ve never seen where they’ve been denied food, any time they want food. It just, it shocks your conscience to think about it.”
Police showed up at the house on Saturday after someone called in a welfare check on the children. At least two of the children were locked inside their bedrooms at night, and the refrigerator was chained and padlocked, NBC affiliate WXIA reports.
Williams said that police arrested the mother of at least two of the children, Brandie Wheeler, and two grandparents who live at the house, Richard Carl Calvert and Belinda Hick. All three are charged with child cruelty, and the grandparents are also charged with false imprisonment.
Austin Adams, who lives next door, said he noticed three children living there after the family moved to the house over the summer. He never saw the mother, but every day and every night, the grandmother was shouting at the children at the top of her lungs, he said.
“I mean if you’re sitting in the living room in the next house and you could hear it, it’s definitely over the top, I would say,” Adams said.
Police said this is the only time they have been called to the house. They are still investigating the case. The children are in the care of the Georgia Division of Family and Children Services.
