A mother and grandmother in Florida have been arrested after leaving 5 children between the ages of 3 and 9 home alone, during which time a 9-year-old boy was stabbed in the back of the head by a 4-year-old girl.
Julie Belliard, the 30-year-old mother of the 5 children, left to go to work in the early morning hours on Friday, leaving the children in the care of Marie Pierre, the 55-year-old grandmother of the 5 kids.
But when Belliard needed to get picked up from work in the afternoon, Pierre decided she would go, knowing the children would be left alone and unsupervised in the home, police in Port St. Lucie said.
Pierre provided the 9-year-old boy with a cell phone in case of an emergency and instructed him to call her if anything happened.
But while Pierre was out and the children were left alone, the youngest child, who is 3-years-old, picked up a knife. The 4-year old girl then grabbed it from the youngest child and threw it across the room and away from the 3-year-old, according to the Port St. Lucie Police in a statement on Facebook.
The knife then struck the TV, bounced off of the stand and hit the 9-year-old boy in the back of the head causing a half inch cut, police said.
Another child saw that the boy was bleeding heavily from the back of the head and immediately tried to call his mother and grandmother for help.
But neither Pierre nor Belliard answered their phones, police said.
Port St. Lucie Police DepartmentMarie Pierre and Julie Belliard in police booking photos. Panicked, the child tried to call police for help but instead of dialing 9-1-1, they managed to dial 9-9-1 instead.
An 8-year-old boy then ran out of the house to a neighbor’s residence to get help.
"I mean, he was just bleeding everywhere from the head. … so it was scary," said neighbor Kristin Pusateri to ABC West Palm Beach affiliate WPBF.
Pusateri said she and her mother were watching television when the 8-year old boy came to them.
"The 8-year-old came and actually opened our front door and came in and was like, 'My brother is bleeding,'" Pusateri said.
It was then that Pusateri and her mother ran to the home to check on the children and discovered that the 5 kids were there with no adults and no supervision.
They decided to bring all five children, including the 9-year-old victim, over to their home, according to WPBF.
"They all came in," Pusateri said. "We just wrapped his head in a towel just to stop the bleeding and just waited for the cops to show up."
The cops arrived quickly, according to Pusateri.
When the authorities arrived, the 9-year-old victim was flown to St. Mary’s Medical Center and treated for non-life threatening injuries.
But, to make matters worse, when police began to conduct their investigation they said they noticed that the 5 children were unwashed and unkempt, had several bug bites on their legs and were living in deplorable conditions.
The Florida Department of Children and Families (DCF) were called in to conduct an investigation where it was deemed that the children were in harm’s way and removed from the home.
The children are now in the care of DCF while Belliard and Pierre have been arrested and charged with Child Neglect.
