5 things: police find 3 abandoned minors in Texas 2:58
(CNN) -
The cause of death for the boy whose body was found dumped in a Houston apartment was "homicidal violence with multiple blunt force injuries," according to the Harris County Institute of Forensic Sciences.
The mother and her boyfriend were charged after authorities found three little brothers abandoned in the home along with their brother's body, police said Tuesday.
Brian W. Coulter, 31, was charged with manslaughter in the death of an 8-year-old boy who passed away in 2020, Harris County Sheriff Ed Gonzalez said in a tweet.
Agents made the horrifying discovery Sunday when they found three children, ages 15, 9 and 7, and the body of a fourth child.
The first thing they wanted to eat were donuts, authorities said.
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Gonzalez called it a "horrific child neglect" Wednesday that "seemed too horrible to be true."
The 8-year-old boy is believed to have died around Thanksgiving, Sgt. Dennis Wolford, a senior investigator for the sheriff's homicide unit, said at a news conference.
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The mother, Gloria Y. Williams, 35, was charged with wounding a child by omission and tampering with evidence related to a human corpse, Gonzalez said.
Bail for Coulter was set at $ 1 million and for Williams at $ 350,000 and both remain in custody, according to online court documents.
CNN's efforts to find out if any of them have a lawyer were unsuccessful Wednesday.
The testimony of the neighbors
In a press release, they say the 15-year-old called authorities and said his parents had not lived in the apartment for several months.
He told them that the skeletal remains in the room next to theirs were those of his nine-year-old brother, who he said had died a year earlier.
"It seems they were there while the body was deteriorating," Gonzalez said.
Neighbors told CNN affiliate KTRK that the 15-year-old relied on them for food.
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One of them, Erica Chapman, told KTRK that she started giving him food six months ago after noticing that the mother was rarely there.
"She would come and park, and he would run down and have noodles and drinks and chips and run back," Chapman said.
The mother would routinely drop off the food or deliver it to her, Gonzalez said.
Another neighbor said the 15-year-old knocked on his door and asked to use a charger, "and we built a link from there," Trevor Thompson told KTRK.
"I started offering him food because I knew he needed more than just a charger," Thompson said.
"A few times I noticed the lights weren't on and the upstairs was quiet, so I thought there were problems because the parents hadn't been there for a while," Thompson said.
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Both neighbors said they did not know there were other children and did not call authorities "because they did not understand the magnitude of the situation," according to KTRK.
The children were very thin and said they were hungry, and the first thing they wanted to eat was donuts, Wolford said.
The apartment was in "deplorable condition," Gonzalez said.
There was no furniture or bedding or blankets, the carpet was dirty, he said, and there were roaches and flies in the apartment.
When asked why the children didn't call the police earlier, Wolford said they were "utterly scared."
The 9-year-old had a jaw injury believed to have been caused by Coulter a few weeks ago, Wolford said.
The boy will need surgery, and that will happen soon, he said.
The mother and her boyfriend lived in a separate apartment, Gonzalez said, but the status of that department is not yet known.
Gonzalez said the 15-year-old appeared to have been taking care of his younger siblings to the best of his ability.
"It seems they were basically taking care of each other," González said, adding that the children were living in "quite deplorable conditions."