Family’s tragedy unfolded in hours ; Children’s parents blame state agency for allowing grandmother to care for the kids
By Eileen Kelley | |
Perhaps it was the course of one day. Or maybe it was years in the making.
But the lives of four Fowler family children changed forever.
On Saturday,
Hours later, Fowler was jailed.
By Tuesday,
Had things gone differently, Janet would have turned 10 months old Friday.
Janet died in a mobile home fire along with her 4-year-old brother, Richard,
"No, no, no, she didn't die. Oh my God, this is breaking my heart," said Kim Caiker.
Caiker and Fowler were not friends.
In fact, Caiker, of
"I thought what is that man doing with a baby carriage?" said Caiker.
Caiker hoped against all odds that the carriage was empty and Fowler was just using it to cart things around.
It wasn't and he wasn't.
Fowler, Caiker said, was stumbling around and appeared unaware of what was going on around him. She said when she saw Janet's little arm drop out of the stroller and into plain sight she raced over to him and asked why he was there with a baby.
Fowler explained how the child's mother was locked up and that he already had the tickets to the show. He told her he didn't want them to go to waste. He then asked Caiker if she could help him change her daughter's clothes because she had vomited all over herself.
Caiker did.
"All along, I had such a bad feeling," said Caiker.
Police apparently did, too, when they hauled Fowler off to jail on child neglect charges as well as charges for having a bottle of pills on him.
Five days later, both
They have no money.
They have no insurance.
"Daddy, I want them back so badly," said
"Now you try and hold it together,"
The lone survivor of the fire, Hattie, 6, spent some time Thursday curled up in a pink bedroom at Woods' house watching a Disney movie.
"I love them a bunch," Hattie whispered into her mother's ears after her mother asked her if she was thinking of her brother and sisters.
"They were lying down," Hattie said of her last memory of her brothers and sisters.
And then Hattie walked away.
A mental health worker came to Woods' house with a small bag of trinkets for Hattie on Thursday. The worker also wanted to speak to the family about counseling services. It's expected that there will be many visitors over the course of the next several days, weeks and perhaps months as the
"Had they not arrested me, my children would be alive," said
He and his wife also blame the
"My dad took care of them," said
Neither was willing to outright say that Swearingen was unfit to care for the children, but at the same time insisted the children wouldn't have died if they had stayed put in Woods' home and had not gone back to the mobile home with Swearingen.
Woods, 68, and Swearingen never married after the birth of their daughter
Woods was a constant in the children's lives.
Harrell of the
Harrell said a caseworker was planning to go to the doublewide early Tuesday evening.
The three children were dead shortly after the
"We're talking a matter of hours," Harrell said.
Swearingen, who for the last several years has been on medication for mental health issues, was designated a sex offender in 1997 when she had sex with her other daughter's then-high school boyfriend. In 2003 and in 2004 she was jailed for failing to register as a sex offender.
"It's no secret that we've all got [arrest] records," said
In a moment of reflection amid the emotion of the last five days,
"This is telling us something. Why did they have to take our kids?" he says of a higher power. "It hurts us. I feel like they are punishing me for something."
Copyright: | (c) 2014 ProQuest Information and Learning Company; All Rights Reserved. |
Wordcount: | 1095 |
JAMES DOLAN 1951-2014 ; Surgeon, novelist, veteran, activist and an innovator His patients loved him for his great beside manner as well as his skills
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