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Mom And Her Boyfriend Arrested After 3 Kids Found Abandoned And Living With Skeletal Remains Of Brother
Brian W. Coulter has been charged with the murder of his girlfriend Gloria W. Williams' 8-year-old son, whose siblings lived with his remains for a year.
A Texas mother and her boyfriend have been arrested after law enforcement discovered three abandoned children who had been living in an apartment with the remains of their deceased brother for about a year.
Gloria Y. Williams, 35, who has been described as “the mother of the murdered child” by Harris County Sheriff Ed Gonzalez in a Tuesday press release has been charged with injury to a child by omission and tampering with evidence. Evidence in this case refers to a human corpse specifically.
Her boyfriend, 31-year-old Brian W. Coulter, is accused of killing the boy, found skeletonized inside an apartment in Houston this weekend. He’s been changed with murder and is currently being evaluated at a mental health unit, local outlet ABC13 reports.
The victim was 8 years old when he was killed last year, Gonzalez states. His remains were reportedly concealed by a blanket.
The couple was apparently arrested on Tuesday evening at a public library as they were reading news articles about themselves and the situation, ABC13 reports. The pair apparently lived in an apartment located just 15 minutes away from where the children were allegedly left to fend for themselves.
“Additional charges are expected to be filed,” Gonzalez stated in his press release, along with the message: “May the deceased child Rest In Peace. May the other children receive the love, healing, and support they need and deserve.”
At a Sunday press conference, Gonzalez announced that three children – all boys, ages 15, 10 and 7 – were discovered earlier that day at an apartment complex in Houston after the teen called the sheriff’s department to report his dead brother, CBS News reports. Skeletal remains of their deceased sibling were also found inside the unit.
The younger children “appeared malnourished and showed signs of physical injury” and all three were transported to a hospital to be assessed for their injuries, according to a press release from the sheriff’s department.
Coulter’s bond has been set for $1 million. It is not clear if he, or Williams, have a lawyer at this point.
It’s still unclear who was paying the rent at the home and what day-to-day life was like for the children. It's also unclear if they were attending school.
“I haven’t been told they were necessarily locked in, but at that age, it appears they were basically fending for each other,” Gonzalez said, according to local outlet KPRC.
A neighbor of the abandoned children told ABC 13 in Houston that she had complained for months about a horrible smell coming from their apartment. The woman, who has chosen to remain unidentified, told the outlet that the odor was sometimes so bad that she would turn off her air conditioner to halt the smell from coming in. She says she complained numerous times about the odor to the front office but nothing was done.
The children are now in the custody of Child Protective Services.
