Background: The Copperas Cove, Texas, neighborhood where a boy came home to an empty apartment (Google Maps). Insets (left to right): Erica Renee Sanders and Keven Dwayne Adams (Copperas Cove Police Department).
A Texas boy returned home from school to find that his mother and her boyfriend had apparently moved out of the house without him.
Keven Dwayne Adams and Erica Renee Sanders were arrested on Friday after Copperas Cove police responded to a call about a 12-year-old boy — Sanders” son — who came home to find an empty apartment and his family gone. According to an arrest affidavit obtained by local Fox affiliate KWKT, the boy went to his neighbor’s house and showed the neighbor the vacated apartment. When police arrived and spoke to the boy, he apparently told them that his mother and Adams, her boyfriend, had mentioned that the family would be moving at some point.
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KWKT reported that police were able to contact Adams and Sanders by phone. According to the affidavit, they told police that the boy’s uncle was going to be picking him up from the home. They did not provide information about how to contact the uncle. Police eventually got hold of the boy’s uncle, and he told police that he was unaware of the arrangement.
Police said that when they spoke to Adams, he “complained at length” about his girlfriend’s 12-year-old son. According to the affidavit, child protective services also contacted Adams and Sanders to obtain a current address. They reportedly refused to provide one.
When the neighbor who took the boy in spoke with police, he said that Adams and Sanders had kicked the boy out of the house in the past.
Adams and Sanders were both charged with abandoning or endangering a child without intent to return. Law&Crime reached out to the Coryell County Sheriff’s Office to find out if Adams and Sanders were still in custody but did not receive an immediate response.
