Handprints of feces adorn the high wall of a bedroom shared by two children in Oklahoma. (Stillwater Police Department)
“Handprints of s––– all over the entire room. Your feet just stick to all the s––– in there,” an officer in Oklahoma explains to other members of law enforcement. “That’s the nastiest house I’ve ever been in.”
That house, ridden with filth and more-present dangers to human life, was recently discovered amid a child sexual abuse investigation. Now, three adults are facing child neglect and sexual assault charges.
This week, Law&Crime obtained body-worn camera footage documenting the inside of the residence in Stillwater, in the Sooner State, where three children were recently able to escape.
Content warning: The footage may be difficult for some viewers.
“The foul odor inside was unbearable,” Stillwater Police Detective Sgt. Sherae LeJeune wrote in an affidavit filed late last month. “The air was thick and musty, which made breathing difficult. We could not complete the walk-through without taking breaks outside for fresh air. I noticed there actually was carpet in the living room. It was saturated with so much urine and feces and walked all over that it was smashed down to a hard surface. My boots stuck to the flooring.”
The footage continues to show the inside of the doublewide trailer; a cat scurries across the floor; a sheet is tacked to a wall, and household objects are piled up among the common rooms. And then, an officer opens the door to a child’s bedroom.
Trails of feces can be seen smeared all over various walls – high, low, and in-between. A pink-and-purple Minnie Mouse sheet is tacked up in the bedroom – covering a massive hole in the drywall. A series of smaller holes are also visible. A dog can be heard whinnying off-camera.
“There were no toys in the room,” the affidavit says. “The walls were smeared with feces. It was obvious the children smeared the feces because of the size of the handprints. Some of the smears reached up to the ceiling on the west wall.”
Authorities say the room was shared by a 4-year-old girl and a 1-year-old boy.
Steven Zackariah Kittle, 35, was arrested in March on one count of child sexual abuse. In June, he was charged with two counts of child neglect. His wife, Lindsey Nichole Pratt, 26, and his mother, Robin Jean Kittle, 59, were each arrested on three counts of child neglect.
In another clip provided to Law&Crime by the SPD, Kittle is arrested on the sexual assault charge. The defendant’s mouth goes agape as the arresting officer explains why he is being handcuffed.
According to police, Steven Kittle admitted during a later interview with two detectives that he sexually assaulted the 4-year-old girl while the 1-year-old boy watched, on multiple occasions, in January.
In the footage, one of the officers responds to a complaint about law enforcement harming the carpet inside the ramshackle residence.
“Is this what you’re talking about, cleaning up the carpet?” the officer says in response. “I mean, there’s poop everywhere.”
The video shows an officer, at one point, rushing out of the home – graphically spitting and gagging due to the unbearable smell.
Officers with the SPD were originally investigating the child sexual assault claim against Steven Kittle. That investigation led an SPD officer and a state child welfare agent to visit the family’s trailer. There, authorities said they found three children, three adults, six dogs, and three cats living in wretched squalor.
The children were taken into the custody of the Oklahoma Department of Human Services.
“Their social and verbal skills were lacking for their ages,” the sergeant wrote in her affidavit, saying the two older children “communicated by pointing and grunting.”
“They still used pull-ups and were not potty-trained due to no guidance and inconsistent access to a bathroom,” the affidavit went on. “They showed signs of nutritional deficiencies and food scarcity. [The youngest child] had deformities in both legs, and a dead roach was removed from her ear canal.”
Steven Kittle is detained on $150,000 bond in the Payne County Jail. He has a preliminary hearing slated for Aug. 31. His wife and mother were being detained on $30,000 bond.
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