3-year-old found gasping for air in bug-infested home, Ohio cops say. Dad sentenced
The father of a 3-year-old girl found gasping for air in a bug-infested apartment has been sentenced, Ohio prosecutors said.
A judge handed down a four-year prison sentence to a 29-year-old man from Fairborn on Jan. 29, Greene County prosecutors said in a news release. This comes after the dad pleaded guilty in November to endangering a child and tampering with evidence in what prosecutors called a “case of extreme child abuse.”
McClatchy News is not naming the father to protect the identity of the child. The man’s attorney could not be reached for comment.
Police were led to the apartment on Jan. 8, 2024 when they received a 911 call from a person saying a child was having difficulty breathing, according to prosecutors.
No one answered the door when first responders arrived, prosecutors said. Officers entered the apartment and found the space “covered in filth” and a “litany of insect infestations” as they searched for the toddler.
They found the girl lying on the ground next to the bed and wearing nothing but a dirty diaper, prosecutors said.
“Officers approached the child and determined, after the child gasped for air, that she was, in fact, alive,” officials said in the release.
The girl, covered in insect bites, was rushed to the hospital in critical condition and was later placed in the intensive care unit. Doctors found she was “extremely malnourished” and weighed 16 pounds, officials said.
The child’s mother was arrested and admitted that she was the 911 caller, but that she had used a fake name, prosecutors said.
She also said she had only taken her child to the doctor once, prosecutors said.
The 26-year-old mother was sentenced to seven to 10.5 years in prison on July 25 after she pleaded guilty to felonious assault, according to a July news release from the Greene County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office.
The father did not have custody of the child but had been in the home several times leading up to police discerning the state of the apartment, officials said.
“Any adult who walked into that house and saw that child should have reported it immediately. As the biological father, (the man) had both a moral and a legal responsibility to care for the victim and chose to do nothing,” prosecutors said.
The child was hospitalized for several weeks, according to prosecutors.
Fairborn is about a 13-mile drive northeast from Dayton.
This story was originally published January 31, 2025 at 3:57 PM with the headline "3-year-old found gasping for air in bug-infested home, Ohio cops say. Dad sentenced."
