Tateona Williams Detroit mom 2 young kids freeze to death sleeping in van after family were unable to secure emergency housing from the city as parent is forced to lay her kids to rest at funeral.
A Detroit, Michigan mother has told of having to lay her two young children to rest after they froze to death amid homelessness as the parent sought and failed to secure emergency housing but to no avail.
Darnell Currie Jr., 9, and A’millah Currie, 2, died on February 10 after the siblings, part of five children and two adults taking refuge in a vehicle, froze to death after the van they were sheltering in stopped producing heat as the temperature fell far below freezing on Feb. 10.
The children according to an autopsy report died from hypothermia after temperatures dipping below freezing as the homeless family sought shelter from the elements in their van in the Hollywood Casino Hotel parking structure (yes the irony is too palpable).
‘That could have been anybody else’s child,’
Tateona Williams, the children’s mother and five children had been sheltering in their van at various casino parking structures across the city for the last three months. Her repeated pleas for help from the city’s homeless services, including the Coordinated Assessment Model, or CAM, according to the parent were ignored.
Mayor Mike Duggan said the children’s mother called a housing hotline in November but apparently wasn’t served. The official has requested a report on the city’s contacts with the family according to WSAZ.
Nevertheless during a Wednesday press conference, Duggan insisted that Detroit has ample resources to address homelessness, ‘but residents were not using them.’
Duggan admitted that Williams had called city homeless agencies at least three times, but ‘For whatever reasons it was not deemed an emergency.’ That did not stop the mayor singling out the mom, saying, ‘The family never called back for service.’
‘It makes you want to break down because that could have been your child. That could have been anybody else’s child,’ said Jessica Wiggins, who visited the funeral home on Wednesday, one day before the two children were scheduled to be laid to rest.
Addressing homelessness in the United States
Deputy Mayor Melia Howard said a local group has stepped forward to pay rent for a year to house the family.
‘It’s just important for me to let them know that we’re not just here for today. We’re going to be with them as long as they need us,’ Howard told The Detroit News.
In interviews with local media, Tateona Williams claimed ‘asking everybody for help,’ only to never receive help.
Said the mom, ‘I called out of state, I called cities I didn’t know, I called cities people asked me to call. I even asked Detroit—I’ve been on CAM list for the longest.’
Adding, ‘Everybody now wants to help after I lost two kids? … It took my two kids to die for you to help me? It’s too late…’
According to the most recent figures, more than 8,500 people in Detroit experienced homelessness and about 1,000 were households with kids. During the 2022–23 school year, Michigan public schools identified a staggering 32,000 preK-12 students who were homeless at some point, a 14 percent increase from the previous year.
Not immediately clear is what emergency measures city leaders have put or will seek to put in place (if any?) in a bid to address the ongoing housing and homeless crisis that plagues most American cities.
The latest report from the US Department of Housing and Urban Development found that 771,480 individuals experienced homelessness in the United States in 2024, up 18 percent from the previous year. This included nearly 150,000 children under 18, the age group which experienced the largest increase (33 percent) between 2023 and 2024.
