John Jefferson
Background: Lindsey Powell’s apartment building (WFSB/YouTube). Inset: Lindsey Powell (Vernon Police/WFSB).
When Connecticut police first walked into Lindsey Powell’s apartment, they were met by an “awful stench” and scene that nearly knocked an officer down, according to cops. Inside, Powell allegedly left her four children — ages 11, 6, 4 and 3 — to fend for themselves in filth and squalor as the “overwhelmed” mom absconded to New York.
“It was difficult to stand,” wrote Vernon Police Officer Gregory Webster in Powell’s Nov. 8 arrest report, which was posted online this week by the local CBS affiliate WFSB. “The stench originating from inside the apartment was burning my nostrils,” Webster said, noting how there was human and cat feces scattered everywhere, along with piles of trash and fly swarms.
“The living conditions in the apartment were deplorable,” Webster said. “The floor of the living room was covered in trash, toys, dirt, old food and clothes. It was difficult to walk in the living room without stepping on something or a bodily fluid … I observed human and cat feces on the floor by the sink in the kitchen and … throughout the entirety of the apartment there was crusty/moldy old food.”
Powell, 40, allegedly left her kids inside the rancid apartment for at least eight hours while she traveled to upstate New York, according to her arrest report. She told authorities she abandoned them because she felt “overwhelmed” and “depressed,” per the report.
A friend said she had been making “suicidal statements referencing driving her car off a cliff. Powell’s aunt told cops she allegedly made claims that day to her about swallowing “a bottle of pills” to kill herself, per the arrest report.
Powell wound up being found “four and a half to five hours” away in Poughkeepsie, New York, with cops saying she “had no intention of returning to care for her children” based on evidence and where she was picked up. It’s unclear whether Powell had been living in these horrifying conditions before her alleged breakdown or whether her apartment fell into squalor after she left. Police were called to the home to conduct a welfare check when her alleged nastiness was discovered.
“Upon arrival, I knocked on the door … and spoke with an 11-year-old female,” Webster said. “Immediately when [the child] opened the door, I was hit with the smell of cat urine, rotting food and feces … I asked if her parents were home and she said, ‘No.’ [The child] said she did not know where her mother was, did not know when she had left or when she was coming back.”
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According to Webster, the children were unable to call anybody because they didn’t have a working cellphone. He observed them eating moldy food while at the residence, per the report. Powell claims three of the kids have autism. It’s unclear where their father is or if he’s involved with the case.
“I had difficulty standing in the bedroom for longer than a few seconds because of this smell,” Webster said. “The children, however, entered this bedroom without issue. I believed the children had become nose blind to the awful stench of the bedroom.”
Powell has been charged with four counts of risk of injury to a child and is being held in lieu of a $250,000 surety bond.
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