A 35-year-old Kentucky mother allegedly left five children in a waste-filled home with no food or working air conditioning, police said.
Desiree Nicole Pohlmann, 35, had returned to the one-bedroom Kentucky residence from a day trip to Lexington, according to police.
Officers arrested her on September 1, records show.
A neighbor’s 911 call brought police to the home, according to authorities.
Children had wandered into the road while drivers steered around them, police said.
Inside, officers found five children, ages 7 months, 17 months, 4, 7 and 9, living with no food, according to court documents.
The children were sleeping on the floor on bedding contaminated with human and dog waste, police said.
The urine stench reached outside the residence, according to investigators. The air conditioning did not work during the hottest week of the year, police said.
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The children appeared malnourished, police said. Officers could not find any of their clothes or prescribed medicine for several of them, according to court records.
Responding officers used their own money to buy the children food before taking them to Norton Children’s Hospital, authorities said.
A child protective services worker called it the worst living situation she had seen in years, records show.
Pohlmann had left the children with her 76-year-old mother, a dialysis patient whom child protective services had already found unable to care for them, police said. The grandmother had warned that she could not physically manage the children, according to records.
Four of the five children had already been removed from Pohlmann’s care under strikingly similar circumstances in April 2025, records state. The state returned them in March 2026.
Months later, police found them living in even worse conditions, records show.
The mother faces one count of second-degree criminal abuse of a child 12 or younger and five counts of endangering the welfare of a minor, court records show.
Pohlmann pleaded not guilty, according to court records.
A judge set her bond at $20,000 cash, and she remained held at Metro Corrections at the time of reporting.
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