Florida Couple Charged Over 4 Children Kept in Truck Cab for Nearly 6 Years

Q: What finally exposed the horrific six-year confinement of these abused children traveling endless miles between Miami and Atlanta?

What appears to have exposed the case was a multi-jurisdictional child-neglect investigation that culminated in Jacksonville, where a sheriff’s detective encountered the children and documented obvious signs of prolonged confinement. The reporting and court records provided do not identify a single dramatic trigger such as a 911 escape call, traffic stop, school complaint or hospital report. Instead, they show investigators pieced the case together across jurisdictions and, once the children were found, obtained interviews describing that they had been living in the semitruck cab since December 2019 while traveling routes between Miami and Atlanta. A key turning point was the condition of the children when authorities saw them. The arrest report says a Jacksonville detective noted they walked with an “unnatural gait,” which investigators attributed to years of being kept inside the truck with little room to move. Their statements about sleeping four together in one small bunk, being kept out of school, denied medical care and left with untreated injuries appear to have provided the evidence that turned suspicion into criminal charges. So, based on the available records, the confinement was finally exposed not by one publicly identified outside complaint, but by a coordinated law-enforcement investigation that located the children in Jacksonville and documented both their physical condition and detailed accounts of years of abuse and neglect.

3 articles · Updated · Fox News · Aug 23

Four child-neglect counts were filed after investigators said Keisha Epps and Tamra Marshon Stewart kept four children largely inside a tractor-trailer cab from December 2019 until their Aug. 6 arrests.
Court records say the children were denied school for about five years, medical and dental care, regular showers, restroom access and outdoor exercise, and all four slept curled up in a single small bunk.
Detectives reported the children walked with an unnatural gait from confinement, were poorly fed, and one had a permanent burn scar after allegedly receiving no treatment; another was found with an untreated sexually transmitted infection.
Stewart also faces planned capital sexual battery charges in Florida's 9th Judicial District, according to court documents; Epps' bond was set at $400,012, while Stewart is being held without bond.
Each neglect count is a third-degree felony punishable by up to five years in prison, five years' probation and a $5,000 fine, while a child sexual battery conviction in Florida can bring life without parole or the death penalty.