Two Iowa parents are facing charges after police say they locked their 4-year-old son in a “makeshift cage” and instructed relatives not to let him out while he was in the house.
Dustin Carl Lee Perry and Lindsay Barbara Marie Hamilton, both 26, were charged with abandonment or neglect of a dependent and child endangerment. Both were booked into the Fremont County Jail without bail. Additional charges are pending.
The parents were arrested around 9 a.m. Thursday after deputies found their developmentally disabled 4-year-old son lying alone and surrounded by a mixture of filth and human and animal waste outside their Hamburg, Iowa, home, according to a news release from the Fremont County Sheriff’s Office.
A 12-year-old Georgia girl who had been missing since May has been found safe in Ohio and a suspect has been arrested.
Dustin Carl Lee Perry and Lindsay Barbara Marie Hamilton were charged with neglect or abandonment of a dependent and child endangerment. (Fremont County Sheriff’s Office)
Another child was found on the property and both were taken to hospital for examination.
Perry and Hamilton, who live in Shenandoah, Iowa, had left their children with a relative and asked that relative to keep the 4-year-old in a makeshift cage.
Police found a cage inside the home made from a baby crib, a baby gate roof and zip ties. Police say the child escaped the cage and left the home without waking anyone.
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The parents left the children with relatives, with instructions to keep the 4-year-old locked in a makeshift cage. (iStock)
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The second homemade cage was found in her parents’ home in Shenandoah, where a child was allegedly kept in a walk-in closet.
The Iowa Department of Health and Human Services removed several children from the Hamburg home.
