KINGWOOD, W.Va. — A Tunnelton couple is charged with child neglect after police said they found children in an unheated home, without water or electricity, filled with garbage.
Joseph Anthony Velone, 35, and Brandy Lynn Velone, 32, were in the Tygart Valley Regional Jail Wednesday in lieu of $30,000 bond each.
According to criminal complaints by Preston Sheriff’s Lt. T.E. Mitter:
Mitter went to the address on Company House Road Tuesday after a Child Protective Services (CPS) worker complained that Joseph Velone was at the home in violation of a protective order. Brandy Velone met the officer at the door and showed him through the house to prove her husband wasn’t there. The CPS worker began checking the home.
“Lt. Mitter immediately noticed that the house was extremely cold. The outside temperature was 31 degrees and the inside temperature was near the same,” according to the complaint.
Brandy Velone told the officer they had run out of wood three days ago, and she was just about to call someone to order wood. One of the children said he had gone into the woods to, “locate broken pieces of wood covered in snow to attempt to bring some heat into the house.”
“The morning temperature this morning was 16 degrees. There was no water functioning in the residence. The knobs to the bath tub appeared to be frozen. There were piles of used toilet paper lying open next to the toilet and filthy dishes covered where the kitchen sink should be,” the complaint says.
Mitter also observed, “the entire house was filled with garbage,” according to the complaint. It looked to him as though a garbage bag had been dumped in a bedroom shared by two children, and another child had to step over piles of trash in a different bedroom to reach the bed. Three children were in the home.
There was so much garbage in the house, the officer wrote, that, “there was more than enough to actually heat the home in lieu of potential freezing.”
“Mr. and Mrs. Velone’s room had piles of garbage lying on the floor and stacks several feet high of Mountain Dew for Mr. and Pepsi for Mrs. cans on the stands on their side of the bed,” the complaint says.
A generator was being used because the electricity was off.
“Cobwebs coated the ceilings and bottles of pills were strewn about the residence,” the complaint says.
The officers put their hands in their vests, rather than, “hurting from exposure.” Brandy Velone was shaking, they noted. She told officers about alleged incidents of violence involving the children, which had never been reported to police.
The children were removed from the home by CPS through an emergency order.
Story by Kathy Plum