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Police tape surrounds a home where authorities say they removed 16 children and arrested four adults in Hamden, Ohio, Wednesday, July 1, 2026.<\/p>\n
Carolyn Kaster\/AP Photo\/Carolyn Kaster<\/p>\n
A bag of rice and a can of insect killer sit in an open window of a home where authorities say they removed 16 children and arrested four adults in Hamden, Ohio, Wednesday, July 1, 2026.<\/p>\n
Carolyn Kaster\/AP Photo\/Carolyn Kaster<\/p>\n
Items including a high chair are seen in a home where authorities say they removed 16 children and arrested four adults in Hamden, Ohio, Wednesday, July 1, 2026.<\/p>\n
Carolyn Kaster\/AP Photo\/Carolyn Kaster<\/p>\n
Debris is strewn on the front lawn of a home where authorities say they removed 16 children and arrested four adults in Hamden, Ohio, Wednesday, July 1, 2026.<\/p>\n
Carolyn Kaster\/AP Photo\/Carolyn Kaster<\/p>\n
Items including a high chair, left, are seen in a home where authorities say they removed 16 children and arrested four adults in Hamden, Ohio, Wednesday, July 1, 2026.<\/p>\n
Carolyn Kaster\/AP Photo\/Carolyn Kaster<\/p>\n
HAMDEN, Ohio (AP) \u2014 Just days after authorities removed 16 children from a squalid home and arrested four adult relatives, the question looms over their southern Ohio village: How could this have happened, for years, unnoticed, right here?<\/p>\n
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Neighbors of the family in tiny Hamden, employees at local stores where they shopped and even the investigators who responded to the scene have been left to wonder that aloud and to themselves, and the limited information shared by investigators don\u2019t offer a full answer.<\/p>\n
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The children weren’t enrolled in school, the family moved around over the past two decades, and neighbors said they\u2019d never spotted the kids. The children remained mostly confined to a small room in the house, investigators said, under deplorable conditions.<\/p>\n
\u201cRight under our nose and no one was there to help them,\u201d said Emily Collins, 27, owner of VC Farm & Floral in nearby McArthur. \u201cIt\u2019s just crazy that all the wonderful things going on in our little Hallmark town and this is what puts us on the radar. It\u2019s really sad,\u201d said the mother of three, who was compelled to decorate the sidewalk with bright flowers and stars drawn in chalk to cheer herself up.<\/p>\n
Authorities said they had gone to the home Tuesday on an unrelated investigation and discovered the children \u2014 ages 1 1\/2 to 18 years old \u2014 some of whom were unable to speak.<\/p>\n
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Seven were taken to hospitals, including one who was in critical condition, investigators said. Their current conditions weren’t immediately known Thursday. Child welfare officials have temporary custody of the children.<\/p>\n
A man who lives three houses down from the Siders family said he had seen \u201cno kids at all\u201d there.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a sad situation,\u201d said Joseph Stewart, 60, who has lived in the \u201cquiet neighborhood\u201d for six years.<\/p>\n
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Four people who are the children\u2019s parents and grandparents were arrested on child endangerment charges. Gary Siders Jr., 36, Gary Siders, 73, Elizabeth Siders, 33, and Christina Siders, 67, pleaded not guilty to child endangerment. Bond was set at $300,000 each.<\/p>\n
An attorney for the elder Siders said he is presumed innocent.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhile there is little ability to stop all speculation, conjecture, or uncorroborated guesswork from taking place, I would ask that we all let the process play out,\u201d Dorian Baum told WCMH-TV in a statement.<\/p>\n
Attorneys for Siders Jr. and Christina Siders declined to comment. Messages seeking comment from Elizabeth Siders’ lawyer were not immediately returned.<\/p>\n
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Authorities wouldn\u2019t publicly share the nature of the other investigation that led them to the house Tuesday. However, court records show a warrant was issued for Siders Jr. that day on misdemeanor indecent exposure charges related to alleged incidents on four days in May. He has pleaded not guilty.<\/p>\n
On Thursday, windows and doors at the formerly wide-open home, about 60 miles (97 kilometers) southeast of Columbus, had been boarded up. Police tape and piles of refuse remained.<\/p>\n
The previous day, a door was ajar and heaps of trash and children\u2019s toys were visible inside. A wood deck and the backyard were filled with discarded tires, a high chair and other debris.<\/p>\n
The house sits on a road tucked alongside a steep railroad embankment, where tracks carry rumbling trains to a rail yard in the village of fewer than 1,000 residents. The closest neighbors are separated by trees and thick brush, but the house is easily visible from the road.<\/p>\n
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Investigators said members of the family had moved around southern Ohio over the past two decades and that it looks like they avoided creating a medical or governmental paper trail. The Vinton County Local School District, the only district in the area, said it has no records indicating that any of the children were ever enrolled.<\/p>\n
\u201cThese folks were pretty good at hiding these kids,\u201d Ohio Attorney General Andy Wilson said Wednesday at a news conference.<\/p>\n
Investigators were reviewing whether the family was reported to any children\u2019s services agencies in the past.<\/p>\n
The children spent most of their time in a room that was roughly 12 feet by 12 feet (3.5 meters by 3.5 meters), according to investigators, who noted that human waste was all around.<\/p>\n
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\u201cThey looked like almost feral animals. It was terrible,\u201d Wilson said.<\/p>\n
Associated Press reporter Ed White in Detroit contributed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Police tape surrounds a home where authorities say they removed 16 children and arrested four adults in Hamden,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":359081,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[127600,127595,127597,127599,127601,127596,127593,127594,127598,1688,23681,59373,89694,59371,59372,61262,82,84,83],"class_list":["post-359080","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-antonio","tag-andy-wilson","tag-christina-siders","tag-dorian-baum","tag-elizabeth-siders","tag-emily-collins","tag-gary-siders-jr","tag-hamden-ohio-children-abuse-removed","tag-joseph-stewart","tag-josh-odell","tag-ohio","tag-package-100024-ap-online","tag-package-100373-mc-complete-state-national","tag-product-30091-ap-ohio-state-news-no-weather","tag-product-30598-ap-national-news-report-a-wire","tag-product-31998-ap-online-national-news","tag-product-46986-ap-online-top-stories","tag-san-antonio","tag-san-antonio-headlines","tag-san-antonio-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/359080","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=359080"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/359080\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/359081"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=359080"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=359080"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=359080"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}