Photo of Jacole N. Price Credit: (kctv5.com)
A Kansas City, Mo., mother is behind bars, after being accused of keeping her 10-year-old daughter locked in a closet without food or water for several days.
Following a welfare tip, police found the oldest daughter severely malnourished and locked in a urine-soaked closet.
Jackson County Prosecutor Jean Peters Baker stood in front of The Children’s Place, a group who focuses on nurturing and caring for young victims of abuse, late Saturday afternoon as she announced 29-year-old Jacole N. Price would be charged with first-degree assault, abuse of child and first-degree endangering the welfare of a child.
When police arrived they said the second floor smelled strongly of urine, and when officers noticed a crib pushed against a closet door that was tied off with rope, they asked, “Is anyone in here?”
A child’s voice answered, “Yes.”
According to ABCNEWS ”We never knew of her the whole three years we’ve been down here,” Kimberly Kelley, another neighbor, told ABC’s affiliate in Kansas City, KMBC-TV. “She told us she only had two kids.”
Once at the hospital the little girl said she had been in the closet for two days, and she does not eat every day. She said her mother gets mad and “punches her on the back” because she “keeps peeing on herself.”
Friday was a great day for this 10 year old girl, because not only will she be saved from her mothers wrath, but it was also her 11th birthday.
