Background: The Upshur County Sheriff”s Office in Buckhannon, W.Va. (Google Maps). Inset (left to right): Joshua Vincent Moore and Kayla Spruill (Tygart Valley Regional Jail).
A teenage girl from West Virginia dialed 911 to report a case of domestic violence involving her parents, leading police to discover a young child with autism confined in a room.
As reported by local CBS affiliate WDTV, authorities detained 40-year-old Joshua Vincent Moore and 36-year-old Kayla Spruill on March 5, charging them with child neglect due to creating a risk of harm. Based on a criminal complaint accessed by WDTV, the Upshur County Sheriff’s Office responded to the distress call after the couple’s 18-year-old daughter reached out regarding an alleged domestic altercation.
Upon searching the premises, deputies found a 4-year-old child isolated in one of the bedrooms.
According to The Inter-Mountain, when deputies arrived, they questioned Moore and Spruill about the supposed domestic dispute. Spruill claimed that Moore accidentally struck her lip with a phone, resulting in a minor cut.
The daughter informed officers that such conflicts between Moore and Spruill were frequent, adding that Moore often subjected Spruill to mental and emotional abuse.
When asked about other children in the home, the daughter led the deputies to a room secured by two locked gates. Inside, they found a 4-year-old described as having nonverbal autism. She revealed that her parents confined the child in the room for what they considered “their own safety.”
According to the complaint, the child was naked with blue stains on their feet and mouth. When the police made the discovery, the child was allegedly trying to finger paint with their own feces.
The daughter told police that her parents asked her to skip school to watch the 4-year-old. She said Moore had to work and Spruill was not home. Police said the teenager told them that Moore often locked the 4-year-old in their room while he “smokes weed and plays video games.”
Deputies then spoke to Spruill, who allegedly admitted that she and Moore would lock the 4-year-old in their bedroom for safety reasons because the child would “elope.” After the deputies allegedly smelled alcohol on Spruill’s breath, they administered a breath test and determined that she had a BAC of 0.1. Police said Spruill claimed she went to her friend’s house after work the previous day and spent the night. While she was there, she claimed that she and her friend split a bottle of wine and watched a movie.
Police said Spruill stated that she returned home at 11:30 a.m. on March 5. The breath test was conducted at 2 p.m.
When police spoke to Moore, he said he smoked marijuana when he woke up at 3:30 a.m. that day, then went to work, returning home at 1:30 p.m. He told deputies that Spruill also smoked marijuana that day before leaving for work and leaving her teenage daughter to watch the younger child.
Moore and Spruill were taken into custody and remain at the Tygart Valley Regional Jail, where they each are being held on $25,000 cash bonds. Both are scheduled to appear for a preliminary hearing on March 13.
