Parents charged with child abuse after kids found living in squalid shack near Joshua Tree

Reporting from JOSHUA TREE, Calif. —  The parents of three children found living in a makeshift shelter in an isolated part of the desert near Joshua Tree were charged Friday with child abuse, authorities said.

Daniel Panico, 73, and Mona Kirk, 51, were charged with three felony counts of child abuse and were scheduled to be arraigned later in the day in Joshua Tree Superior Court, according to the San Bernardino Sheriff’s Department.

The three children were found living in the shelter off of a dirt road amid the desert brush.

The home is a rectangular box made of plywood. A small opening leads to a room filled with mattresses. A separate side room has a green sofa and a pile of dining room chairs. There is a tin roof, weighed down with rocks and lined with twigs and mattress cushioning in what looks like an effort at insulation.

A few feet from the shelter is a makeshift kitchen with an old camping stove and shelves lined with canned soup and vegetables. There are crayons and dolls, a broken trampoline and bikes, and many other children’s toys on the property.

The San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department found that the siblings, ages 11, 13 and 14, had been living on the property with their parents for four years, littered with mounds of trash and several holes filled with feces.

There was no electricity or running water. No bathrooms or heating. Between 30 and 40 cats roamed around the squalid desert property and inside a nearby travel trailer.

On Wednesday, the children’s parents were arrested on suspicion of willful cruelty to a child, the Sheriff’s Department said.

Authorities initially reported that the children were living “in a box,” but Capt. Trevis Newport of the sheriff’s Morongo Basin Station later clarified that the children were not being held captive in a confined space like the Turpin children in Perris.

“They’re homeless,” Newport said of the Joshua Tree family. “It’s a shelter, the shape of a box … nowhere near what it sounded like when it came out.”

Authorities released photos of the property that show a structure authorities described as about 20 feet long, 10 feet wide and 4 feet high.

A plastic tarp appeared to be draped over the roof, taped onto a wall of plywood. Toys and bicycles, along with furniture, containers and other debris, were strewn across the dirt.

“This time of year, it’s very cold at night,” said Cindy Bachman, a spokeswoman for the Sheriff’s Department. “When that wind blows, it is freezing.… These kids are living in a shelter made of wood and tarp and it’s 20 to 30 degrees at night.”

The Sheriff’s Department said the children did not have enough food and were living in an “unsuitable and unsafe” environment. But investigators don’t believe they were malnourished, Newport said.

“It’s just tragic that these children were being raised in conditions like this,” Bachman said. “There are services available to help these folks, and clearly they chose not to ask for any help.”

The children are not enrolled in public schools, and it’s unclear whether they were being home-schooled. Officials with the county’s Children and Family Services took custody of the three children, who Newport said were in “good spirits.”

“When it comes to raising children, we have a standard we have to live by,” Newport said. “In this case, we decided, let’s pull the kids from the residence, we don’t want them living in that environment.”

Kirk and Panico were booked into the Morongo Basin Station jail and are each being held in lieu of $100,000 bail.

Esquivel reported from Joshua Tree, Tchekmedyian from Los Angeles.

UPDATES:

12:35 p.m.: This article was updated with new information from the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department.

This article was originally posted at 11:55 a.m.