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Newly released body camera footage from police in Ohio shows the moment officers saved a nearly-starved 3-year-old girl who weighed a mere 16 pounds from a home that left authorities in shock due to its deplorable and unsanitary condition.
The child’s mother, 25-year-old Rabyah N. Muballigh, was taken into custody last month and charged with one count of second-degree felonious assault and one count of third-degree felony endangering children, court records reviewed by Law&Crime show.
The bodycam footage obtained by Law&Crime shows officers from the Fairborn Police Department at about 1 p.m. on the afternoon of Jan. 8. responding to Muballigh’s ground-floor apartment in the 300 block of Wallace Drive in regards to a 911 call about an unresponsive toddler in need of immediate medical assistance. The home is about 60 miles northeast of Cincinnati.
Footage shows the residence is littered with garbage and discarded food. Several unfurled sticky-paper fly traps are seen, nearly all completely covered with dead flies. Trash appears piled up almost six feet in some rooms.
“Oh my god,” one of the officers can be heard saying before even finding the adolescent victim.
When officers opened the door to the little girl’s room, they found the child — who is obscured in the footage — emaciated and huddled in a corner, covered with bug bites. She was lying on the ground next to a feces-and urine-covered mattress. Bugs that appear to be roaches can be seen on the floors and walls.
The officers initially seem to believe the child is dead but express relief when they realize she’s alive. The officers rip blankets from the wall covering the windows to allow more light as they check on the victim. She was rushed to a hospital.
The officers encountered Muballigh outside the home and learned she was the person who had called 911, but she had given the dispatcher a false name. She is cuffed and placed in the back of a squad car. An officer explains to her she is being arrested for felony child endangerment. Muballigh appears to start crying before the officer pulls away from the home.
Police said the child was stabilized at the hospital and continues to gain weight on her road to recovery. She will likely be in the hospital for “quite some time,” police said, according to Dayton, Ohio, CBS affiliate WHIO.
Muballigh was being held at the Green County Jail as of Wednesday on $500,000 bond.
