Phoenix Mother Arrested For Child Abuse
New details have emerged in a case against Phoenix resident Alejandrina Angel Flores, 27, arrested last week. She was also charged with six counts of child abuse.
According to court documents, the Phoenix Police Department received a call from Flores’ sister last Thursday about a domestic-violence situation at Flores’ apartment. According to the sister, Flores’ boyfriend was holding a knife in a threatening way. However, when officers arrived at the scene, they found something vastly different.
The following story comes from Phoenix Officer Anthony Daley, whose graphic probable-cause statement details what happened when he and two other officers arrived at Flores’ apartment near 37th Avenue and Camelback Road.
Officer Daley’s Statement:
When [Flores] opened the door, a very strong odor of decomposing trash and food hit me. It was very strong and made it hard to breathe.
Flores told the officers that the story about her boyfriend wasn’t true, though it can be assumed this probably was no longer their primary concern at this point.
“Behind Flores, I observed six kids [that were approximately] a few months, one, two, three, five, and six [years old],” Daley wrote.
He goes on to describe the way the baby, who was “laying on her back on the couch” had a “very full diaper and appeared to have not been changed in a long time” and that the older children “were wearing dirty clothes and appeared to have not been changed or bathed in several days.”
All six children were covered in dirt, and “The one year old was walking around wearing no clothes. [She] had an obvious diaper rash and sore [on] her butt cheek, and I could also observe feces between her butt cheeks,” Daley wrote.
Horrified by the scene in front of him, Officer Daley asked Flores if he could conduct a welfare check in the apartment, and she agreed.
While the six kids shared a bag of gummies, Daley looked through the two-bedroom apartment: “When walking on the floor, my shoe would stick,” he wrote. “It appeared the floors have no been washed in several weeks [and] were covered in food, trash, and dirt.”
Disgusting Child Abuse Case
He saw a wall outlet with something electrical hanging “loose” from it in the living room, and in the kitchen, he found the sink faucet running over a large pile of dirty dishes. He describes the refrigerator and freezer as “dirty” and says he saw “cockroach eggs” in the corners of the ceiling.
Daley’s Written Report:
In the bathroom he found a toilet filled with feces and dirty toilet paper, and noted that the floor was covered in trash and soiled diapers. There were cockroaches crawling out of the shower drain.
As he left the bathroom, Daley saw an “unknown yellow liquid puddle” in the hallway. He then asked the 6-year-old to show him where he slept, and the boy pointed to one of the two bedrooms. Daley walked into the room, which had no bed and no light fixtures, and this is what he found:
Daley’s Continued Report:
There was a door on the ground with a folded cardboard box. There [were] Christmas lights hanging from the [ceiling] to the ground and a pile of dirty kids’ clothes in he closet. While walking through the apartment I had difficulty breathing and had to exit to catch my breath due to the odor.
Later in the probable-cause statement, Daley wrote that Flores told one of the other officers that the apartment had bedbugs . Also that there was a woman claiming to be the apartment manager approached the officers and said the cleanliness of the apartment was an ongoing problem. “She stated in the past she has observed maggots on the floor of the apartment.”
Flores was said to not be under the influence of drugs or alcohol at the time,but apparently didn’t notice or didn’t care that her children were playing with a pair of scissors while Daley was conducting the welfare check. Flores claimed the diaper rash on the 1-year-old actually was chicken pox.
One of the other officers called the Department of Child Safety. They then sent out two employees to take custody of the children.
DCS spokesman Doug Nick tells New Times that the agency “is aware of this incident, and we can confirm that all the children are safe.” According to court documents, Flores did not have family members who could take the children.
Flores was booked into the Fourth Avenue jail on March 4. She was released on her own recognizance the following day. She faces six criminal counts of child abuse. Flores will appear in court for a status conference on March 18, 2016.
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