A Las Vegas television station obtained heartwrenching video showing police arriving last month to rescue six children from an allegedly abusive household — including two boys, ages 9 and 11, padlocked into a single dog kennel.
As CrimeOnline previously reported, Travis Doss, 31, and Amanda Stamper, 33, were arrested after Stamper fled to a nearby store and told employees she was hiding from her husband — Doss — because he threatened to kill her. She told officers there were six children inside, and that Doss regularly abused them and her.
She said at the time that one of the children — the 11-year-old — was beaten so badly that Doss told her he thought he’d “kicked him in the head too hard” and killed him.
A Clark County grand jury indicted Doss earlier this month on 40 charges, while Stamper was indicted on seven charges.
In the video obtained by KLAS, the arriving officers spend several minutes trying to convince a child inside the one-bedroom, one-bathroom extended stay apartment door before a maintenance worker persuades the child to open the door. The officers found six children — a seventh child, 2, was with Stamper when she fled the apartment — including the two boys in the kennel.
The older boy had “two black eyes that were swollen shut, multiple marks and bruises all over his body, and he was emaciated,” police said.
The boy told the officers he hadn’t eaten in days. Doss had told police that he “had no choice” but to lock the boys away because they stole food.
“He kept saying that he was always hungry and that’s why he stole, and then he said it’s food that’s in the trash can so how is that even stealing,” a detective told the grand jury earlier this month. “And he kept saying that he needed big food because he was a big boy now and that he would have to share like one large fry from McDonald’s with like all six kids, his six siblings I mean, and just that he was never really fedm and that’s why he stole.”
All the children shows signs of severe abuse — except the 2-year-old, who was Stamper’s only child, although she was pregnant when she was arrested. Doss is the father of all the children.
In the video, the boy says that his father “hit my face in the cage because I was squished up trying to get out of the cage because I didn’t do anything and I was freaking out.”
The officer takes the children outside to wait for paramedics, telling them, “You’re not a bad kid, this is just a really crappy situation. And we’re going to get you some help and this is not going to happen again.”
Both Stamper and Doss have pleaded not guilty. Stamper is being held without bond because of a probation violation, and Doss was initially given a $250,000 bond, but it was upped to $500,000 after his indictment.
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[Featured image: Las Vegas Metropolitan Police via KLAS]
