The mother of the three children allegedly abandoned in a deplorable Houston-area apartment with their dead brother’s remains has apologized — but insisted she regularly checked on them and did not know about the boy’s death.
Gloria Y. Williams, 35, maintained her innocence from behind bars at Harris County Jail on Thursday as she remains held on charges for injury to a child by omission and tampering with evidence.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t do it,” she said in a jailhouse interview with news station KHOU.
When asked whether she was aware her son Kendrick Lee, 8, was dead, she said, “No.”
Williams claimed that she stopped by to check on the children from time to time.
“I checked on them every two weeks,” Williams told the news station.
She was arrested after the eldest of her children, a 15-year-old boy, called 911 Sunday to report that he had been living with his brother’s body for about a year.
When authorities arrived, they found the teen and two other siblings, ages 10 and 7, living alone with Kendrick’s body in the apartment, which didn’t have any power.
The younger children appeared to be malnourished and had physical injuries, authorities said.
An autopsy determined that Kendrick died of “homicidal violence with multiple blunt force injuries.”
Williams’ boyfriend, Brian W. Coulter, has been charged with murder for the boy’s death.
It’s unclear where the couple had been staying while the surviving kids lived in squalor.
The children are now in the custody of Child Protective Services.
Authorities said it appears the children have different fathers, one of whom is dead and another who is not in the picture, ABC13 reported.