Child Service visited an apartment in the Bronx, and the 4-year-old was locked up with the troubled mother and her sibling’s body, but left after a knock, the neighbor said.
Lisa Cotton, 38, and her 8-year-old son, Nazil Milien, had been dead for at least two weeks before relatives found them, but the toddler died in the Horror of Horrors inside the house Friday the day after a child’s worshipper dropped the ball, said neighbor Sabrina Coulson.
“They didn’t s-t,” Coulson said Sunday. “They were ringing the people’s bells here the day before the wellness check. They were here, but they didn’t s-t.
“I rang my bell and asked if there was any concern upstairs, and the man opened the door and started screaming,” she said. “Lisa was a very cool girl. I’ve never seen her son with her. It’s just a girl. That’s awful.”
A relative of concerns finally checked the family on Friday and discovered that he was a four-year-old promise, alone, starving and in a frightening state in his mother’s bed.
Cotton’s father, Hubert, 71, had dispatched his oldest granddaughter to check out his apartment on East 231st Street.
The ACS was not the only city institution to leave a promise trapped in hellish circumstances. Neighbors said officers were also called to the apartment on Tuesday but left after not feeling the foul smell reported by others.
Hubert Cotton said the toddlers survived by “feeding chocolate.”
According to law enforcement sources, Lisa Cotton has a history of unstable behavior, and there was a pending case of ACS, allegedly neglected by a child before her death.
She was arrested in 2021 for child neglect. Police said they had said she was swinging her then-daughter in a stroller and lit up a wig on the road in White Plains.
When officers arrive, she is said to have left and left with a promise. The results of the case were not available because the file was sealed.
One neighbor said that Mom had “episodes” in the past.
Sources said police believed that Lisa Cotton, who suffered from asthma, could have died of cardiac arrest, but her son said that premature birth and carrying a feeding tube could have died of starvation.
An ACS spokesperson declined to comment on Sunday’s incident other than saying the agency is “investigating this tragedy in the NYPD.”
