PONTIAC (WWJ) -- In the second such case this year, a Pontiac woman is facing child abuse charges after her children were found alone in an apartment in deplorable conditions.
The Oakland County Sheriff's Office said deputies responded to 31-year-old Teriomas Tremice Johnson's apartment last Friday, after her 12-year-old daughter reported a possible break-in.
Deputies did not find evidence of a break-in, officials said, but what they did find was a home littered with rotten food and human and animal feces.
There was no working plumbing in the apartment, according to the sheriff's office, the sinks were clogged and it appeared that the children had been defecating in a cardboard box in the bathroom. Investigators said the 12-year-old girl and her and 9-year-old brother and sister were reportedly left by themselves often in that mess, along with three cats.
The kids told authorities they had not seen their mother since the previous day, and deputies discovered that Johnson was in Ann Arbor.
When she made her way back to Pontiac after about three hours later, she was arrested.
Johnson is charged with three counts of child abuse, second degree – a 10- year felony.
She is being held without bond after officials said she threw a chair and yelled at the magistrate after her Zoom arraignment.
“It defies understanding how parents blessed with the gift of a child could show such cruelty,” Oakland County Sheriff Michael Bouchard said, in a statement. “The complete lack of compassion and humanity is heartbreaking, and I am eager to see justice served for this unconscionable act.”
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Officials said Johnson was already on probation for 36 months after her conviction for retail fraud – first degree, fleeing and eluding – fourth degree, and fourth-degree child abuse out of 52-3 District Court in Rochester Hills.
The sheriff's office said Jonson fled from the police at the time with two of her children in the car, and Child Protective Services placed each child with their biological fathers.
In announcing charges in this case, the sheriff's office noted similarities between Johnson's and the case of Kelli Marie Bryant of Pontiac.
What's different about Johnson's case, officials said, was that it's believed the children were sporadically going to school, and that Johnson did stay at the apartment sometimes.
Bryant, 34, was charged early this year with first-degree child abuse for leaving her three young children to live alone in squalor for years, surviving only on weekly drop-offs of prepared food, officials said, while she lived elsewhere. Bryant is free on bond awaiting trial in Oakland County Circuit Court.