Toddler found wandering streets alone with soiled diaper leads police back to shocking scene at home
A toddler found wandering in the middle of a Florida street with a heavily soiled diaper ended up leading police to a home with extremely hazardous living conditions with the father passed out intoxicated in his bed, police say.
The incident occurred on Sunday when the Flagler County Sheriff's Department in Florida responded to multiple emergency reports concerning a 2-year-old child “walking in the middle of the street in pajamas with a heavily soiled diaper,” according to a statement from the Flagler County Sheriff’s Department on Tuesday.
Prior to the incident, witnesses say that they observed a child in the front yard of a nearby home and that they took the child to the residence where they found the child’s father, 44-year-old Ross Judy of Palm Coast, “passed out in his bed intoxicated,” police said.
The Flagler County Sheriff’s Department responded to the home and, during their investigation, they found “dangerous tools and garbage in the interior and exterior of the home along with animal feces, filth, and an emaciated dog with an ear that was almost rotted off and fur missing from its body,” authorities said.
“The residence was in deplorable living conditions with several alcoholic beverage containers, bugs swimming in toilet water, and a sink piled high with several inches of cigarette ash to the point the sink was no longer visible,” according to the Flagler County Sheriff’s Department. “Pill bottles were scattered throughout a spare room and on top of living room shelves along with exposed razors and hypodermic needles, which were all accessible to the child.”
“No child should be living in deplorable conditions with an adult who obviously doesn’t care about their wellbeing,” said Flagler County Sheriff Rick Staly in a written statement following the incident. “The Flagler County Sheriff’s Office has no tolerance for anyone endangering children or animals. I am thankful to our residents who ‘saw something and said something’ so that our deputies could intervene.”
Judy was arrested and charged with child neglect without great bodily harm and abandon animal to die, sick, diseased or Infirm.
The suspect was taken to the Sheriff Perry Hall Inmate Detention Facility and is currently being held on a $4,000 bond, authorities said.
The Florida Department of Children and Families and Palm Coast Animal Control are also investigating this incident, and their investigation is currently ongoing.
