Three people are accused of child endangerment after five children were reportedly discovered in a handmade wooden box attached to the bed of the pickup truck in which they were traveling.
On the afternoon of May 12, the temperature outside was recorded as having a high ranging being between 90 to 100-degrees in the Needles area of San Bernardino County, California.
According to a release from the San Bernardino Sheriff’s Department, near 2:00 pm, the authorities received from a phone call requesting service at a rest stop claiming there might be youngsters riding in the back of a pickup truck inside a crate. The caller reportedly suspected the children might be in danger.
Colorado River Station and Needles PD deputies dispersed to the area reported and came across a pickup traveling near I-40.
When they performed a traffic stop to investigate the claims made in the call, the authorities said that they found five children crated in the back of the truck as reported. The wooden box in which the children, the youngest reported as 1-year-old and the oldest as 13, were left unrestrained, and without an amount of ventilation that the police purported would be necessary on a hot day. It was additionally noted that there did not appear to be any water for the children.
Three adults were reportedly inside the truck and the authorities identified them as 39-year-old Zona Brasier, also noted as the aunt of the children, 40-year-old Kenneth Standridge, and Aushajuan Hardy, 41.
As stated by Dale Madden, identified as Brasier’s stepbrother, Brasier reportedly stepped in when the children and their mother lost their home and she was in the process of relocating them from Sacramento to her home in Oklahoma.
Standridge is facing charges for suspicion of child endangerment, being a felon in possession of a firearm, and driving under the influence. His bail was set at $75,000.
Brasier has been accused of child endangerment, and her bail was set at $100,000.
Hardy was charged for suspicion of child endangerment, and he was additionally found in violation of a no-bail felony warrant out of Sacramento, so he is being held without bail.
All three were booked into the Colorado River Station Jail.
The children are reported as being safe in the custody of Child Protective Services.
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