Law enforcement officers searching a rural northern New Mexico compound for a missing 3-year-old boy didn’t locate him but found 11 other children in filthy conditions and with hardly any food, a sheriff said Saturday.
The children, ranging in age from 1 to 15 were removed from the compound in the small community of Amalia, New Mexico, and turned over to state child-welfare workers, Taos County Sheriff Jerry Hogrefe said.
The children were turned over to the New Mexico Children Youth and Families Department, officials said, adding it was done for their “health and safety,” the sheriff’s office said. “Three women believed to be the children’s mothers were also detained yesterday while investigators continue to sort out details of the case,” the office added.
Hogrefe said officials were initially searching for Lucas Morten and others, including 39-year-old Siraj Wahhaj, who was wanted for child abduction, and 3-year-old AG Wahhaj, a child that was abducted.
But then he said a message was forwarded to his office from a Georgia detective that officials believed came from the compound. “We are starving and need food and water,” the message said, Hogrefe was quoted as saying in the sheriff’s department news release.
There were no injuries during the search, the sheriff said. But Wahhaj and Morten initially refused to follow commands. Wahhaj was armed with a rifle and four handguns, Hogrefe said.
There was little food in the compound, which consisted of a small travel trailer buried in the ground and covered by plastic with no water, plumbing, or electricity, he said.
“The only food we saw were a few potatoes and a box of rice in the filthy trailer,” the sheriff said.
The adults and children appeared like “refugees not only with no food or fresh water, but with no shoes, personal hygiene and basically dirty rags for clothing,” the sheriff said. “We all gave the kids our water and what snacks we had - it was the saddest living conditions and poverty I have seen.”
