The home in Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania, where children were reportedly found living in dangerous conditions (WTAE/YouTube).
A Pennsylvania mother has been sentenced for abandoning her children in a hazardous and unsanitary home while she was away with her boyfriend.
Heidi Beer, 35, received a prison sentence ranging from three to 23 months, as confirmed by court records obtained by Law&Crime.
Following her incarceration, Beer will serve a three-year probation period. Pittsburgh’s ABC affiliate WTAE reports that she will also undergo six months of electronic monitoring within the same residence implicated in the case.
Beer had previously entered a guilty plea to charges of endangering the welfare of children, recklessly endangering another person, and providing a false report.
Beer, along with her 69-year-old mother Leslie Ann Keller, was taken into custody on July 28. This followed a police visit to their Westmoreland County home in Vandergrift Borough, triggered by a reported altercation, as previously detailed by Law&Crime. However, the situation was far worse than anticipated.
Authorities noted a strong odor emanating from the property, according to a criminal complaint reviewed by local sources. Inside, investigators navigated through extensive animal feces, decomposing food, and urine covering the floors. Four children, aged 9 to 16, were discovered living in these conditions, with the eldest child informing officers that their mother had been absent for several days.
The children reportedly had no water, and the shower spigot was broken off.
“It was very obvious that water had not been on in a long time,” the affidavit stated, adding that the children”s beds were observed to be deflated air mattresses, and there were holes in the ceiling across the home.
The question remained as to where exactly the children’s guardians were.
Beer had reportedly been staying with her boyfriend in Pittsburgh – about a 50-minute drive away – who had asked her to leave the kids behind because he could “give her a new and better life without them.”
But Beer was not the children’s only guardian, authorities maintained, reporting that their grandmother, Keller, lived about a mile away and was aware of the lack of food and water at the kids’ home. One of the children said Keller had not gone inside the home in months because it was “too gross,” and she allegedly admitted that the kids would fill up empty cat litter containers with water at her house because there was no water at theirs.
As officers led the grandmother through Beer’s filthy home, she reportedly tried to chastise the oldest child — a 16-year-old girl — for not cleaning up, until a responding officer in turn scolded the older woman, telling her it was not the “children’s responsibility to clean this absolute disgrace of a mess.”
Keller was also charged with endangering the welfare of children as a parent or guardian. She is awaiting a formal arraignment.
