Parents Accused Of Locking Kid In Filthy Room, Telling Cops Nothing 'Wrong' With Playing In Feces

A couple in Kentucky are accused of locking their 4-year-old in a dark room for long periods of time — to the point where the child would regularly relieve himself in the room and even play with it.

Nickalas Jorgenson and Natasha McBee, both 23, from Knox County, were arrested on Thursday, according to WKYT-TV in Lexington.

The boy apparently told social services that he would "yell and scream for his parents to let him out," according to an arrest report cited by WMC-TV in Tennessee. When deputies went to the house for a welfare check on the boy, Jorgenson told them that he would discipline the kid by keeping him in the room for 15 to 20 minutes at a time.

However, the boy told deputies he was in the room so long he was forced to use the floor as a restroom.

The room had a lock on the outside and the window was blacked out with a sheet of wood.

Knox County Sheriff's Deputy Hunter Luttrell told WMC-TV that deputies found holes in the wall and floor.

"They were consistent with either trying to get out or something along those lines," Luttrell said. “The windows were boarded. There's hardly any airflow coming in and out of the room. There was feces and urine inside the room."

Deputies said the boy was covered in dirt and feces when they talked to him. The couple told investigators that the boy enjoyed playing in his own filth — and said there was nothing "wrong" with that, according to the arrest report.

The couple told deputies that the boy's grandmother takes him when they go to work, according to the arrest report, but when deputies asked the grandmother, she said she hadn't seen the boy in a week.

Authorities took the child to a nearby hospital as a precaution, and the parents were charged with criminal abuse, unlawful imprisonment and wanton endangerment.

[Photo: Knox County Sheriff's Office]