Ashli Rene Lock, Texas mom abandons malnourished kids, aged 12 & 1, at filthy Houston area hotel for weeks as children were forced to fend on their own.
A Texas mother is alleged to have left her two children, ages 12 & 1 in a ‘filthy hotel room for an extended period of time,’ according to prosecutors.
Ashli Rene Lock, 37, upon her arrest on Thursday was charged with child abandonment.
Officials said that officers noted both of the children appeared malnourished and filthy, and the one-year-old was sleeping in a soiled diaper.
Court documents filed by the Harris County District Attorney’s Office stated the 12-year-old told police Lock withdrew her from school so that she could care for her one-year-old brother full-time.
The 12-year-old also told police that her mother didn’t provide her with adequate food for her baby brother, so she fed him macaroni and cheese, while residing at a West Houston ‘Quality Inn’ by South Loop.
‘Unliveable nightmare and abuse…’
The 12-year-old said that she hadn’t left the hotel room in about a month. She said sometimes Lock would come home from work, and sometimes not.
Officials said the 12-year-old also said she didn’t have her mother’s phone number and had no meaningful way of contacting her in the event of an emergency FOX26 reports.
Officers described the hotel room as ‘something resembling a Marvin Zindler inspired nightmare of unsanitary living conditions, with broken bottles on the floor, drugs in plain view, slime in the refrigerator and moldy food haphazardly strewn throughout.’
Court documents also stated that the 12-year-old showed officers photographs of injuries that she said came from her mother striking her.
It remained unclear what led to the mother, described as working as a ‘bartender’ abandoning her children and what recourses, if any, were available to her.
