LAKE STEVENS — A 10-month-old boy was on the verge of kidney failure and so hypothermic that a nurse predicted he would have died within a day had he not been rescued.
The boy has gained two pounds in two weeks, but his development appears to be delayed, according to court papers filed Friday in Snohomish County Superior Court.
The infant and his two siblings, ages 7 and 3, were found alone Jan. 31 in a filthy Lake Stevens house that later was deemed uninhabitable.
There was no functioning toilet or heat. The house was littered with garbage, animal feces and urine. There were exposed wires and no working smoke detectors.
Prosecutors on Friday charged the children’s mother, Amanda Foley, with multiple crimes, including child abandonment and criminal mistreatment. Mark Dorson, her boyfriend and the father of the youngest child, faces the same charges. Both are convicted felons.
The couple is accused of leaving the children home alone for at least two hours. The pair, both 32, didn’t try to contact police or Child Protective Services for days.
Foley allegedly told detectives that she left the children in the care of a neighbor so she could buy food. She returned to see police officers outside the house. She said she panicked and went to a friend’s house. She told police that she came back and saw her children being taken away in an ambulance. She didn’t call the hospital to check on them because she thought “everything was fine,” Snohomish County deputy prosecutor Katie Wetmore wrote.
Foley reportedly agreed that her children would have been safer living on the streets.
Dorson told police that the situation “got blown way out of proportion.” He gave detectives the same story about the kids being left with a babysitter. He explained that he didn’t call police or CPS because he didn’t have a phone.
Police arrested the couple Feb. 3 at the CPS office in Monroe.
Detectives interviewed a neighbor, who denied that the couple asked her to babysit. The night before Foley and Dorson were arrested, they asked her to lie to police and social workers.
She said she saw the couple leave the house together on Jan. 31, about two hours before police arrived.
Detectives were told that Dorson and Foley didn’t stay overnight at the house. They had told the neighbor that a teenage girl stayed with the children at night. She said she has never seen a teenage girl come or go from the house.
The older children attended an elementary school and preschool in Lake Stevens. School staff had made reports to CPS on Oct. 2, Dec. 9 and Jan. 30 related to the children missing from school and the older girl’s health, hygiene and overall well-being.
CPS officials have declined to discuss any history related to the family. It’s unclear if social workers ever responded to the school’s calls.
The children were rescued only after a woman called the Crime Stoppers tip line. She had gone to the house multiple times to confront Dorson about unfinished mechanical work she paid him to do. The 7-year-old always answered the door and said her parents were sleeping.
The front door was padlocked when police arrived. They knocked and heard little footsteps come to the door and then retreat.
When they went around back and peered through a glass door, they spotted two children hiding under a blanket on a couch. They had been watching cartoons.
The oldest girl was reluctant to let the strangers inside. She eventually unlocked the door and officers walked into a filthy house. Children’s drawings covered walls. The stench of urine, feces and rotting food was so strong that it drove at least one officer outside to catch his breath.
The girl told officers that her parents were asleep upstairs. No one was upstairs except the girl’s 10-month-old brother. Police kicked open a locked door to get to him. He was lying in a portable crib and wearing only a heavily soiled diaper. There was a pile of dirty diapers nearby.
He didn’t cry or move, and officers first believed he was dead, the deputy prosecutor wrote. An officer found a pulse and rolled the baby onto his back. The boy moved his eyes, but the rest of his body was still.
All three children were taken to a hospital. They were dirty and reeked of urine and feces.
A forensic nurse told detectives that the infant was severely hypothermic. Given his low core body temperature, “she would have expected him to die within 24 hours had he not been given treatment,” Wetmore wrote.
The children were placed in protective custody.
Dorson has since bailed out of jail. Foley remains behind bars. She told investigators she is pregnant and had smoked methamphetamine the day before her arrest, court papers said.
Both are expected in court next week to answer the charges.
Diana Hefley: 425-339-3463, hefley@heraldnet.com. Twitter: @dianahefley.
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
