Fire crews were called in to breach the storage locker before Milwaukee Police entered and found six children, the oldest of whom was nine and the youngest two months old
Six young children including a two-month-old infant have been freed from a storage unit they had been locked inside.
Police in Milwaukee have taken a 26-year-old woman and a 33-year-old man into custody on charges of child abuse and neglect after the children were found at a StorSafe unit in the north of the city.
On entering the unit, police found six children, whose ages as well as the two-month-old baby have been reported as two, three, five, seven and nine years. Thankfully, the children hadn’t sustained any physical injuries during their confinement, reports say.
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According to dispatch audio obtained by ABC News, officials initially thought there were just two children inside the storage container.
Police were unable to breach the locked container so fire crews were called in to assist them. No one was harmed during the fire department’s operation.
A woman living in the area said she had seen a family with children leaving the unit in the morning and returning at night on several occasions. Though her comments were refuted by another storage facility user named Mac, who said they had “never seen kids walking around here, no. Not at all”.
A man told ABC News affiliate WISN that he was confused how this could happen. “I’m confused. I don’t even know how to respond to it,” he said. “To me, this sounds like a cry for help, maybe they just needed help and didn’t know how to get it.”
Local resident Tonya Lowe, who said she was shaken by the discovery, told Fox6: “It touched my heart. I had to come out. I could not believe it. We have failed these kids. As people, the community.”
“They had no support,” she said. “We don’t need to be cruel and treat our kids like animals and lock them in places they don’t deserve to be put in.”
Another woman, who asked not to be identified due to safety fears, said she spotted the youngsters riding bikes in the area a week prior.
“I’m surprised they weren’t caught sooner,” she said. “I said okay what are the kids doing back there?”
The Milwaukee County District Attorney’s Office is said to be reviewing the charges.