Child whose skeletal remains were found in Houston apartment killed by ‘homicidal violence’ medical examiner says

By Andy Rose, Jennifer Henderson, Ralph Ellis and Raja Razek, CNN

The cause of death of the child whose body was found abandoned in an apartment in Houston has been ruled “homicidal violence with multiple blunt force injuries,” according to the Harris County Institute of Forensic Sciences.

The child’s mother and her boyfriend have been charged after authorities found three young siblings abandoned in the home along with the body of their brother, police said Tuesday.

Brian W. Coulter, 31, was charged with murder in the death of an 8-year-old child who died in 2020, Harris County Sheriff Ed Gonzalez said in a tweet.

Coulter committed a “felony offense of injury to a child by intentionally, knowingly and recklessly causing bodily injury” by striking the child with his hand and kicking the child with his foot, thereby causing the death, according to charging documents filed by the Harris County District Attorney’s Office.

Sheriff’s deputies made the horrifying discovery on Sunday when they found three children — 15, 9 and 7 years old — and the body of the child. The first thing they wanted to eat was doughnuts, officials said.

Gonzalez on Wednesday called it a “gruesome child abandonment case” and it “seemed too horrific to be real.”

The 8-year-old child is believed to have died around Thanksgiving, Sgt. Dennis Wolford, the lead investigator with the sheriff’s homicide unit, said at a news conference.

The mother, Gloria Y. Williams, 35, was charged with injury to a child by omission, injury to a child causing serious bodily injury and tampering with evidence involving a human corpse, according to court documents. The bond for those charges totals $900,000.

CNN has reached out to the public defender assigned to Williams but has not yet heard back.

Bond for Coulter has been set at $1 million. Conditions include no contact with Williams or anyone younger than 17. CNN has been unable to determine whether he has secured an attorney.

In a news release, the sheriff’s office said the 15-year-old called authorities and said his brother had been dead for a year and that his body was in the room next to his. The teen said his parents had not lived in the apartment for several months.

“It seems that they were in there while the body was deteriorating,” Gonzalez said, referring to the other children.

The skeletal remains “were in plain view” and “weren’t concealed in any way,” the sheriff said Wednesday.

Neighbors told CNN affiliate KTRK that the 15-year-old boy relied on them for food.

One of them, Erica Chapman, told KTRK that she started giving him food six months ago after noticing that the mother was rarely there.

“She would come and park, and he would run down and grab noodles, drinks and chips and run back up,” Chapman said.

The mother was dropping off food or having it delivered on a routine basis, Gonzalez said.

Another said the 15-year-old had knocked on his door and asked to use a charger, “and we built a bond from there,” Trevor Thompson told KTRK.

“I started offering him food because I knew he needed more than just a charger,” Thompson said.

“A few times I noticed the lights weren’t on, and it was quiet upstairs, so I figured there was trouble because the parents haven’t been there in a while,” Thompson said.

Both neighbors said they didn’t know there were other children and didn’t call authorities “because they didn’t understand the magnitude of the situation,” according to KTRK.

The children were very thin and said they were hungry, Wolford said.

The apartment was in “deplorable condition,” Gonzalez said. There was no furniture, no bedding or blankets, the carpet was dirty, he said, and there were roaches and flies in the apartment.

Asked why the children didn’t call the police earlier, Wolford said they were in “absolute fear.” The 9-year-old had an injury to his jaw that is believed to have been caused a few weeks ago by Coulter, Wolford said.

The boy will need surgery, and that will happen soon, he said.

The mother and her boyfriend were living in a separate apartment, Gonzalez said, but the condition of that apartment is not yet known.

Gonzalez said it looked like the 15-year-old had been taking care of his younger siblings the best he could.

“It appears that they were basically fending for each other,” Gonzalez said.

The two younger children appeared malnourished and showed signs of physical injury, the sheriff’s office said. All three were transported to a hospital for treatment.

They are now in the emergency custody of The Texas Department of Family and Protective Services, according to a statement sent to CNN by DFPS.

In May 2020, three of the children stopped attending school in the Alief Independent School District, according to Kimberly N. Smith, director of public relations and communications at AISD. Smith did not specify which three children she was referring to.

In 2019, school district officials began a truancy investigation into the mother for one of the children’s lack of attendance, but the case was dismissed at the end of the 2019-2020 school year by the District Attorney’s Office, Smith said.

“The children did not attend school during the 2020-2021 nor 2021-2022 school years. In September 2020, school personnel attempted a home visit in an effort to return the children to school which went unanswered,” Smith added.

The Harris County District Attorney’s Office said it plans “to get to the bottom of what these children have endured.”

“Our specialized prosecutors continue to work with the sheriff’s deputies, as this horror is thoroughly investigated,” spokesperson Dane Schiller said in an email to CNN.

This story has been updated with additional information on charges and bond amounts.

Correction: A previous version of this article had the incorrect age for one of the children. Law enforcement Wednesday corrected the age they provided for the middle child to 9.

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CNN’s Carma Hassan, Amy Simonson and Susannah Cullinane contributed to this report.