An Oklahoma couple arrested on child neglect charges kept their apartment so filthy that law enforcement officers struggled to keep from vomiting when they found two young boys — 3- and 4-years-old — locked naked in an upstairs room that was covered in feces.
Dakota Rain Dodd, 24, and Aubrianna Jewelyn Willow Freeman, 22, have been charged with five counts each of child neglect, Oklahoma County jail records show.
A neighbor called police after spotting the two young boys through a window.
“I’d go by that window and see them little boys naked in it, they looked at me as if to say help me,” said Barbara North told KWTV. “They would have dookie all over their face, hands, mouth.”
Oklahoma City Police responded on September 12 to the home shortly before noon, and Dodd answered the door, Law&Crime reported. The officer wrote in his report that Dodd appeared to have been sleeping. He initially said he was the only person home but then admitted that the two young boys were upstairs.
“Dodd again reiterated that the boys were upstairs and offered to go get them for me,” an officer wrote in the father’s police report. “I asked if I could go with him, and he said I could.”
“Dodd opened the door after shaking/moving the doorknob as if it was locked,” the officer wrote in that initial report. “Once the door opened, I was struck with a smell that made my stomach turn and my eyes water. I observed two young boys who were entirely naked immediately come out of the room as if they had been standing at the door waiting or trying to get out.”
That’s about as far as the initial report, which was heavily redacted, went, Law&Crime said. But a records request unleashed an unredacted version with shocking detail:
On the stairs leading up to the second floor, there were piles of what appeared to be human feces. The smell of feces got stronger as you walked up the stairs. At the top of the stairs was a bedroom. The room had no furniture, aside from a children’s plastic slide, and a few toys. The floor was covered in multiple piles of smeared and flattened human feces. The walls were covered in [a] smeared brown substance. Based on the overwhelming smell of the bedroom, the brown substance was believed to be feces. There were numerous small handprints in the brown substance on the wall. The only window in the room was also smeared with the same brown substance. The windowsill had a thick layer of the same brown substance. Located in the closet was a twin-size bed frame. The frame was standing on it’s end and did not have a mattress. On the slats of the bed frame, the same brown substance and handprints were seen.
The boys, the. officer wrote, “had feces caked into their fingernail beds, palms of their hands, feet, legs, and faces” and the “feces was dried and did not appear to be ‘fresh’.”
The room the victims were in was covered in feces, both on the walls and carpet. Every wall in the bedroom had feces smeared all over it. The walls appeared to have been painted over once and then feces smeared over the fresh paint. The window in that bedroom is the same window the original reporting party saw the naked child standing. That window was approximately 3.5-4 feet off the floor. The glass on this window was also covered in brown stains similar to those on the walls. The brown smear marks on this window are also visible from the parking lot. There was no other furniture in the bedroom. The floor was carpeted and had also had feces on it. The officers reported the feces appeared to be human feces. This bedroom also had a camera mounted on the wall near the ceiling on the [northeast] corner of the bedroom. A bed frame was observed in the closet of this bedroom and was leaned against the wall with no mattress.
Police said that an 11-month-old girl also lived at the apartment but was kept separate from the boys.
The newly released report said Dodd admitted to keeping the boys locked up for at least half the day so Freeman could sleep. Freeman, however, said they were only locked up for two hours per day — and she was not home when police first arrived.
Dodd, in fact, called Freeman while the officer was still downstairs in the home, and the officer wrote that he heard her say, “The f****** cops are at my door. We need to go,” according to Law& Crime.
Once the children were downstairs, Dodd told the officers he “had intended” to give the children showers and cover the feces on the walls “with paint.”
All three children were taken to the hospital for an evalucation and placed in the custody of the Department of Human Services, KWTV said. Dodd and Freeman are being held on bonds of $250,000 each.
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[Featured image: Dakota Dodd and Aubrianna Freeman/Oklahoma County Detention Center]
