Content warning: This story contains graphic descriptions of child abuse and neglect.
A tragic story has emerged from Arizona. A 9-year-old boy was found dead in his home by authorities performing a welfare check on July 14, per a media release from the Pima County Sherriff’s Department shared with E! News.
“The investigation revealed,” the department’s statement continued, “that the child had been deceased on a couch inside of the residence for an extended period of time.”
Joseph Antonsen, the child’s father, has been arrested for two felony counts of child abuse and one felony count of negligent homicide, authorities confirmed, noting the investigation is ongoing.
Antonsen told police, per local outlet KVOA, citing an interim complaint, that his son had become ill on July 12, eventually "shuttering and going limp.” Antonsen then reportedly went to turn on his car to bring his son—whose name police did not release—to get medical attention, but upon returning inside the house found his son breathing and without a pulse.
The 38-year-old conceded to police he "should have called somebody,” the outlet reported, but that he left the house for an unspecified location before coming back two days later.
When law enforcement entered the house, per the interim complaint obtained by KVOA, they found piles of garbage near where Antonsen’s son was located in addition to "empty beer cans, large piles of soiled diapers, rotten foods, large amounts of one gallon bottles full of what appears to be urine, lots of insect activity, spiders like black widows, and brown recluse were observed inside the home along with spiderwebs everywhere throughout all the walls of the home."
The outlet added that deputies said the home had no running water or working toilets, and that Antonsen’s son was found in a sitting position and that his body was “was in the process of decomposition."
Antonsen is being held on a bond of $500,000, according to online jail records viewed by People.
E! News is attempting to determine whether Antonsen has yet attained an attorney and whether he’s entered a plea.
A neighbor of the father and son told local outlet KOLD that her daughter was a friend of the 9-year-old, but that she’d seen the father and son with less frequency in recent months.
“She would always be so excited to run across and go hang out with them,” the woman said of her daughter. “It would take me like hours to be like, ‘You guys need to come inside now.’”
And of the deceased, she added, “He was a really friendly kid. He was very polite.”
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