Background: A section of West New York Avenue in Orange City, Florida (Google Maps). Inset: Jacqueline Daniel (Volusia County Sheriff”s Office).
A woman from Florida faces allegations of permitting her three children to live in dire conditions within a home that authorities labeled as a “house of horror” and “the worst house in the world.”
Jacqueline Daniel, 43, stands charged with three counts of child neglect, according to Volusia County court records. She was arrested on Monday.
According to a charging affidavit accessed by Law&Crime, deputies from the Volusia County Sheriff’s Office went to a residence on West New York Avenue in Orange City. Their visit was to assist the Florida Department of Children and Families in conducting a welfare check on the children.
But what officers say they encountered shocked them.
The home was described by Volusia County Sheriff Mike Chitwood as “the worst house in the world,” being utterly overtaken by roaches, lice, black mold, feces, and heaps of trash, as reported by Orlando NBC affiliate WESH. The mother herself acknowledged that the house was unfit for human habitation or even for animals.
Daniel appeared to have been aware of the hazardous environment but allowed it to persist. In footage from a body camera, the Florida mother reportedly confessed to the responding deputies, “I know I deserve this … I want a chance to get this right.”
The children’s ages were 9, 10, and 15, and they were found with lice in their hair, eyebrows, and eyelashes, the sheriff’s office reported. One of the children required hospitalization due to the severity of the infestation. Daniel “admitted to knowing” about her children’s lice situation and that it was left untreated, as noted in the affidavit.
Chitwood described the home as “one of the worst I’ve ever seen” and warned that the situation could have further deteriorated without the deputies’ intervention.
One bedroom in the home was filled with cockroaches while another one was locked, the court document states. The children’s bathroom sink is also said to have been clogged with foam and brown water.
Cockroaches were “falling off the ceiling, crawling all around the floors/furniture,” and one child was “observed sitting on the couch with cockroaches crawling on her” and all over her brother’s bed. There were also “holes in the walls with cockroaches leaving and entering” and “what appeared to be black mold/dirt/dust” around one room.
The sheriff added that Daniel appeared to be more concerned about how going to jail could affect her massage therapy license than the well-being of her kids, local Fox affiliate WOFL reported. She said “she does not get any child support and has been having a rough time trying to get a better job while also taking care of her children,” per the affidavit.
The children were reportedly taken to Fish Memorial Hospital in Orange City to be treated and are now in the custody of the state. Daniel was booked into the Volusia County Jail and made her first court appearance on Tuesday.
However, court records show she was released from custody later that day.
