AVON PARK, Fla. — Larry Whitis and his wife aren’t just shocked; they are appalled at what the Highlands County Sheriff's Office says was happening just a short walk from their Avon Park home.
“You’re thinking, ‘Wow.’ You didn’t think it would ever happen in your neighborhood until it happens," Whitis said Tuesday.
Deputies say a 9-year-old boy was being abused by Jack Percy Young, the boy's legal guardian and grandfather, and Ashlee Nicole Marshall, Young's live-in girlfriend.
“It’s maddening, you know, to think that somebody could treat a child like that," said Scott Dressel, a public information officer for the sheriff's office.
According to Dressel, Young, 54, and Marshall, 34, were arrested Monday and charged with aggravated child abuse after detectives got a look at the boy’s room roughly two weeks prior.
"If our jail was in the condition that that boy’s room was in, then we’d be in trouble," Dressel said. “There were dog kennels in the living room that were in better condition and cleaner than the room where this 9-year-old was being basically held.”
The case against the two adults started on April 14 when the child went missing, which "sparked a massive search operation." The boy was later found hiding under a car in a neighbor's yard and placed in the custody of the Department of Children and Families.
When a detective searched Young's home near Lake Letta in Avon Park, he reported finding the room that he characterized as "filthy," "deplorable," and "unsafe."
According to the detective's affidavit, the room — built out of plywood — had an "overwhelming" smell of urine.
The sheriff's office said the child’s room had boarded-up windows, holes in its walls big enough for insects and rodents to enter, no furniture or bedding except a metal bed frame with a thin foam pad, dirty floors and walls, and a sheet of plywood used as a door that the caretakers would secure with screws — sometimes trapping the 9-year-old inside the unlit room for "periods of time" so long the child would soil himself.
"During my 17-year career, I have worked in and visited numerous correctional facilities," the detective, Shane Spencer, wrote in the affidavit. "The worst prison cells that I have seen do not compare to the conditions I observed in [the child's] room."
According to the sheriff's office, in a forensic interview conducted days later, the boy said he would be denied food as punishment at times and was physically abused by his grandfather. Deputies said the boy also told them a security camera was installed in the room, and he had to yell to be let out, sometimes unsuccessfully.
The 9-year-old and two other children who were also living in the house are now in state custody.
Young and Marshall were given bonds of $50,000 each, and according to Dressel, Young has since bonded out.
Whitis, meanwhile, hopes the two will one day be made to suffer as the child did.
“I don’t believe in, you know, murdering people or anything like that, but I believe they should be going through the same situation that little fella went through," he said. They should go to jail and never get out.”
“For them to treat that little man like that, or anybody, I wish they could be treated the same way. You know, I believe in an eye for an eye," he added.
