State authorities were called into investigate a local family after an Odessa Police Department dispatcher found a 4-year-old wandering alone and officers discovered horrendous conditions inside her home, according to an OPD report released Tuesday.
The dispatcher told officers she was out walking her dogs near Douglas and Falcon Drives around 8:30 a.m. Thursday when the 4-year-old ran across the street to pet her dogs wearing only a training diaper and plastic shoes.
The girl had decaying front teeth and told the dispatcher she was cold, the report stated.
When an officer knocked on the door of the house the child pointed out, he could hear numerous dogs parking and the 58-year-old woman inside called out that she’d fallen and couldn’t get to the door to open it, the report stated. She asked the officer to come in.
According to the report, the officer found the woman’s walker and assisted her to the couch and then toured the home.
The officer reported he could barely breath inside the home due to the overwhelming smell of dog, cat and gerbil feces and urine. The entire house was “extremely dirty” and the girl’s bedroom floor, clothing and toys were covered in dog feces and urine, the report stated.
Similar conditions were found in other rooms in the residence and large amounts of trash was piled up in the garage and covered in flies and maggots, the report stated.
The officer also found a prescription Xanax bar and syringes within easy access of the girl, according to the report.
The woman in the home told officers she’s been having health issues that cause her to pass out and she’s unable to get up by herself or dress herself, the report stated. She said she’d just recently gotten out of the hospital and had no idea where her phone was.
She acknowledged the girl has been getting out of the home recently, causing the child’s mother to put additional locks on the door.
The woman said the child’s mother was at work and a 13-year-old girl who also lived in the home was at school.
The woman was taken by ambulance to Medical Center Hospital and the girl’s mother, Kitrena Renee Pettigrew, 39, was arrested on suspicion of abandoning/endangering a child, a state jail felony punishable by six months to two years in prison.
According to the report, officers believe she left the child at home “with no responsible or capable person to provide reasonable care for her.”
Child Protective Services and Adult Protective Services were both called into investigate. The city’s animal control division was also summoned to the house.
Pettigrew remained in the Ector County jail Tuesday on a $4,000 surety bond.
