The older brother of a Missouri toddler who died after a fall from an 8th story window earlier this week was himself found wandering alone along a busy road a week before.

Destiny Randle and Moses Bass, the parents of the 3-year-old boy who fell from the window of their apartment at Independence Towers, were listed as the parents of the 5-year-old boy who wandered into a gas station convenience store just before 7:30 a.m. on July 22 and told the clerk he was hungry, KSHB reported.

Randle and Bass have been charged with endangering the welfare of a child in the death of the toddler, as CrimeOnline reported. The parents told detectives they were aware of deficiencies in the window the child fell from and knew that their children could open it and frequently threw their toys out the window.

The 3-year-old was found on the ground on Monday morning and was taken to Children’s Mercy Hospital with head trauma, broken bones, and other injuries. He died from his injuries that afternoon.

The 5-year-old boy had initially been spotted walking along the road an hour before he walked into the Conoco gas station. According to a police report, the gas station clerk put the child, who was carrying a Nintendo Switch, in a back room and gave him some food.

A responding police officer asked the boy where he lived, and he pointed to the Independence Towers apartments, but later told the officer he lived further down the road. The officer stopped at several houses but could not find the child’s home, so he took the boy back to police headquarters, saying the child either didn’t know where he lived or simply didn’t want to say.

A supervisor made a Facebook post about the child, and eventually they found a profile account on the Switch labeled “Moses” and found that it had previously been connected to a WiFi account labeled “BassFamily.”

Police then found Moses Bass living on the 8th floor of Independence Towers. The officer took the 5-year-old to the apartment, and Randle answered the door. The officer asked if the boy was her child, and she responded, “no,” saying that her children were inside. But when she looked at the boy, she called for Bass and told him she now knew why the front door was unlocked when she got up that morning.

The officer asked Bass why the boy would be reluctant to come back home, and Bass said that it was probably because he’d gotten in trouble for urinating in the toy box the previous day.

The officer offered assistance services to the parents, but they declined, and the child went back to his family.

KSHB later spoke with the gas station attendant, who asked not to be identified and said the child told him he didn’t want to go home, that he wanted to stay with the attendant.

A week later, the toddler fell from the window. The parents said they used a metal pole to keep the window from sliding open, but even the toddler knew how to take it out and open the window, CrimeOnline reported.

Police said the apartment was filled with trash and that beds in the children’s room were covered in dirt and without sheets.

“Old, used diapers were also found in the children’s room with no receptacle to hold them,” court documents said. “The children’s room specifically smelled of urine.”

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[Featured image: Moses Lee Bass and Destiny Leeann Randle/Jackson County Sheriff’s Office]