Mother arrested after police find 5 kids in 'deplorable conditions'

GWINNETT COUNTY, Ga. — A woman says instinct kicked in when she saw several children alone with no food.

"I just couldn't leave them like that," Venisha Dawson told Channel 2's Tony Thomas.

Dawson said she walked by an extended-stay motel in Lawrenceville and noticed five kids alone living in what she calls deplorable conditions. She said the kids were very hungry and asking for their parents.

"There was empty food boxes, dirty diapers laying around everywhere. You could touch the babies diaper and urine would just flow straight out of the side of it," she explained.

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On Monday, Dawson told Thomas her clothes still reek from the stench in room 233. When she found the children, Dawson called the police and gave the older kids some food from McDonalds.

Body camera footage Thomas obtained shows Lawrenceville police as they walked into the room. They told Thomas they found five children ages 1, 2, 3, 5 and 10 inside, and no parents to be found.

"It was a bad situation for the children to be in," said Capt.Greg Vaughn with Lawrenceville police, "There was only one clean diaper in the room at the time."

After a couple of hours, police said the mother, Sadergia Elliot returned with another 5-year-old and a bag of groceries from a nearby Walmart. She was charged with child cruelty.

Records show the children's father was an inmate in the Clayton County jail at the time. The children were taken into state custody.

Dawson said she's glad she didn't just walk on by.

"Once I took them, I cried like a newborn baby cause it was like they were taking my own," she said.

Cox Media Group