Child found in house with roaches and feces, police say

Timothy Grantham

Timothy Grantham

A 2-year-old girl was wearing a soiled diaper and had feces on her hands. A shower was infested with roaches. And a visitor from a state agency vomited because the stench was so bad.

That was the scene a Columbus officer, Nathan Tooley, found at a house Tuesday when he went to meet a woman who wanted to evict her 34-year-old son, the Columbus Ledger-Enquirer reported.

Inside, the son, Timothy Grantham, and a girlfriend were sleeping, the officer said. The girl was on the floor in the soiled diaper, with feces on her hands.

Tooley told the judge in a court hearing he learned the girl’s mother was addicted to drugs and had left the child in Grantham’s care when the girl was 2 months old.

Tooley took Grantham and his mother, Barbara Coe, 57, into custody. The paper reported that Coe said she had been living there for six months. They were charged with second-degree child cruelty, a felony, and reckless conduct, a misdemeanor.

The state Division of Family and Children Services was called in, the newspaper reported, and the worker threw up because of the smell.

The girl is now in DFCS custody.

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