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Girl, 4, Found Alive At Home With Bodies Of Her Mom And Young Brother
A four-year-old girl has been found trapped alive in a New York City ‘house of horrors’ apartment alongside the corpses of her mom and brother.
Promise Cotton was found with the bodies after being in the house for two weeks.
The discovery of the young girl has raised concerns over why not enough was done for Promise’s welfare.
The New York Post reports that neighbors had been complaining of a foul odor from the Bronx apartment that smelled like ‘death’ for weeks, and had also heard screams coming from inside.
Police received an anonymous 911 call on Tuesday asking for a welfare check on the family at the East 231st Street apartment in the Wakefield section.
Authorities visited the property, but no one answered the door. They said they didn’t hear any noise or smell an odor, so they had no reason to break down the door.
A neighbor stated the cops said they’d be back in a few days, and a social worker was trying to get a court order to have the door broken in.
Neighbor Sabrina Coleson said the Administration for Children’s Services had visited the premises one day before the horrific discovery was made.
Coleson told the Post: “They didn’t do s***, they were here ringing people’s bells the day before the wellness check. They were here, but they didn’t do s***.”
Lisa Cotton, 38, and her eight-year-old son, Nazir Millien, were declared dead at the scene.
Cotton’s father, Hubert, had received a call from her landlord asking if she had moved out of the property.
Hubert shared: “I had been trying to call her for days and she never answered… I figured she didn’t answer me because she didn’t want to talk to me.”
The father then sent his oldest granddaughter to check on the family.
When she entered the property, she found four-year-old Promise starving and in an awful condition on her mom’s bed, as bugs crawled over her deceased family.
The relative grabbed Promise, fled the scene, and called authorities. Hubert said his granddaughter had been surviving on ‘chocolate.’
Law enforcement sources have stated that Cotton had struggled with mental illness, with a history of erratic behavior.
She had a pending ACS case for alleged child neglect before she was found deceased.
Cotton had previously been arrested in 2021 on child abandonment charges after she was caught swinging her then-infant daughter around in a stroller and lighting a wig on fire, according to police.
Hubert suspected his daughter may have suffered from bipolar disorder – a mental health condition that causes extreme mood swings.
These include emotional highs, also known as mania or hypomania, and lows, also known as depression. Hypomania is less extreme than mania, as per the Mayo Clinic.
Police don’t believe foul play was involved in Cotton and Nazir’s deaths.
Authorities told Hubert that his daughter, who suffered from asthma, may have died of a cardiac arrest, while Nazir, who was born prematurely and had a feeding tube, may have starved.
The four-year-old was taken to a local hospital in a stable condition and is now being cared for by her grandfather.
Hubert shared: “She hasn’t said anything. She’s a baby. She looks at me sometimes, you know? Like she knows something, we don’t know anything, we’re trying to find out.”
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