A Pennsylvania couple who reportedly starved their three young children to the point they ate paint off the walls was sentenced to prison Monday.
PennLive.com reported that Joshua Weyant, 35, was sentenced to 19 to 39 years in state prison while wife Brandi, 39, was sentenced to 18 to 37 years behind bars. The pair had pleaded guilty to various charges, including aggravated assault, conspiracy, false imprisonment, unlawful restraint, and child endangerment.
Chief Deputy District Attorney Jennifer Gettle said the three children—ages 4, 5, and 6—were so malnourished that they nearly died. Ex-Children and Youth Services caseworker Nicole Smith said they were left in conditions reminiscent of a Nazi concentration camp, according to the news outlet.
KYW-TV noted that the Weyants were raising the children but weren’t their biological parents.
Children and Youth Services officials had discovered the unthinkable abuse in late 2016. As CrimeOnline previously reported, authorities found the children locked inside a bare unheated room after social workers had visited the Halifax Township home.
The children were also found covered in feces, urine, animal hair, and dirt. Prosecutors also claimed the children were eating paint off the wall to survive.
“The door to the room was locked from the outside and the paint on the wall was peeled off at the height of the kids,” Dauphin County District Attorney Ed Marsico told People in 2016.
Smith said the Weyants had an overabundance of food in the home—so much so they were overfeeding their dogs and had piles of rotting food in the backyard when authorities raided the home in December 2016.
The caseworker said the jailed couple never inquired about the kids but had asked a friend to get medicine for one of their sick dogs, according to PennLive.
The newspaper wrote that the three children are now living with a “loving family.”
[Feature Photo: Josh and Brandy Weyant/Dauphin County Sheriff’s Office]
