Crazed Florida couple confined 4 kids in tractor-trailer for seven years: arrest

A Florida couple is being charged with child neglect after allegedly keeping four children confined in the cab of a tractor-trailer for almost seven years without “time to take showers, use the restroom” or “exercise outside,” arrest records show.The children “have not been allowed to attend school for approximately five years,” they told interviewers at a child advocacy center, according to an arrest report.Keisha Epps, 51, and her fiancé, Tamra Marshon Stewart, 37, have been living in the cab with the children while Epps works as a truck driver, driving a route between Miami and Atlanta, according to court documents.Since December 2019, the children were kept inside the vehicle “for the majority of their days.”A detective on the case reported the children were “walking with an unnatural gait from being confined to the cab.”They were “fed poorly,” and they never received medical or dental care—even for emergencies, the report shows.During the interview, one of the children recalled a time she “burned herself badly with cooked noodles.”“There was a lot of blood,” she said.Neither Stewart nor Epps took her to get medical treatment, the child told investigators.The child has a “permanent scar” from the burn, court records show.Stewart “would watch” the children when Epps was sleeping, showering and driving the truck, the children said.

And when the children witnessed sexual abuse and confronted Stewart, he “beat them by punching them in their heads,” reports show.The identity of the alleged victim of sexual abuse wasn’t clear.The children said they told Epps about the sexual abuse and saw her witness the sexual abuse.

She called one “derogatory names and continued to leave them alone with” Stewart, reports show.One of the children was found to have an untreated sexually transmitted infection.All four children shared a bunk in the cab so small that they had to lie “curled up side by side because they could ...