Michelle Campbell and Paul Weber were charged after officers found a 6-year-old boy locked in a dog cage, according to the Philadelphia Police Department. (Mugshots: Philadelphia Police Department)
Cops have arrested a Philadelphia couple after deputies allegedly found a 6-year-old boy in a dog cage, which was locked with zip ties, along with two girls, even younger than the boy, wandering outside.
“Officers removed the juvenile male from the cage and escorted him to emergency medical personnel,” said the Philadelphia Police Department in a statement to Law&Crime. “The children were transported to St Christopher’s Hospital for evaluation and will be under the care of DHS [the Philadelphia Department of Human Services].”
Police announced they had arrested the parents Michelle Campbell, 30, and Paul Weber, 31, for one count each of endangering the welfare of a child and recklessly endangering a person.
Philadelphia police said they responded to the 4200 block of Glenview Street regarding a report of screaming. Upon their arrival, they found the two girls, “ages three and five, partially clothed, wandering around, crying in the rear of the house.”
Neighbor Hector Perez said he found the girls when he arrived home from work on Thursday.
“They have Pampers on,” he told WPVI. “They have no shirts, no pants, they have no shoes. They’re screaming, it’s raining, it’s cold. They’re screaming for their mother and father.”
Another neighbor Tom McNamee described often seeing the children running around unsupervised and said he would have intervened if he knew what was happening in the home.
“I would’ve did a couple things,” he told NBC Philadelphia. “It’s disgraceful. It’s horrible.”
Neighbors told the outlet the 6-year-old boy lives with autism.
“This has been an ongoing drama man,” Perez told WITI of the home. “I’ve been here 12–15 years. Cops have been coming here on and off. Nothing has ever been done.”
Two other children lived in the home but were at school, according to CBS News.
Two other adults were also in the home, according to WPVI. They were an 80-year-old woman in a wheelchair and a man in his 40s, thought to be the grandmother and uncle. The older woman was taken from the home in an ambulance later in the day, though the reason was unclear, according to NBC Philadelphia.
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