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Thursday's Final Word
A mother and grandmother have been charged with endangering the welfare of children after five kids were abandoned in a disgusting, filthy, and decrepit home in Pennsylvania while the mother ran off to live with her boyfriend.
Hiedi Lynn Beer, 35, and Leslie Keller, 69, have each been charged with five counts of endangering the welfare of children, WTAE reported. Beer also faces five counts of recklessly endangering another person.
Police in Vandergrift were called on July 28 to an alley where four children were reportedly have some kind of altercation. Officers spoke to the children, between the ages of 9 and 16, who told them their mother had not been home in days.
The 16-year-old told officers she had been taking care of her siblings, a criminal complaint said. She said she’d been trying to reach their mother because they had no water.
Officer followed the children back to the house and immediately noticed a foul smell. The children led them through the house, where they had to “avoid stepping on large feces droppings all over the residence, rotten food and urine pooled all over the floors.”
According to the complaint, the bathub was filled with dishes and dirt and the shower spigot was broken off. The home also had holes in the floors and ceilings.
“It was very obvious that water had not been on in a long time,” the affidavit said.
Officers found the children’s bedrooms covered in filth. Bunk beds were made of plywood, and the kids had only deflated air mattresses to sleep on.
The affidavit notes leaking pipes, and the children reportedly said they had no food or water, eating only free lunch at school.
The children said their mother, Heidi Lynn Beer, lived with her boyfriend in Pittsburgh, about 50 miles away, and sometimes came back home. They also said the boyfriend beat them.
According to the police report, the boyfriend told Beer to abandon the children because “he can give her a new and better life without them.”
As it turned out, there was a fifth child in the home.
Police called the children’s grandmothers to the home, and one of them told officers she had not been inside the house in months “because it is too gross.” She admitted she knew there was no water in the home, adding that the kids came to her house to fill empty cat litter containers with water for use in their disgusting home.
The report said this grandmother, identified as Leslie Keller, berated the 16-year-old for not cleaning the filthy house ih the presence of the officers. Police reprimanded her, telling her it was not the “children’s responsibility to clean this absolute disgrace of a mess.”
Police Chief Dan Anthony said the children were left in the care of other family members.
According to Law&Crime, Beer is being held on a $20,000 bond and has a preliminary hearing set for August 12. Keller has a preliminary hearing scheduled on September 9, but it’s not clear if she is in jail.
