D.C. police are investigating the deaths of four children whose badly decomposed bodies were found in a Southeast Washington row house Wednesday morning.
Police said the children were sisters between the ages of 5 and 18, but their bodies were in such an advanced state of decay that authorities could not positively confirm their identities or determine how they died.
The children’s mother, 33-year-old Banita Jacks, was being interviewed by D.C. detectives Wednesday night. She had not been charged with a crime, police said late Wednesday.
D.C. Police Chief Cathy Lanier said the children had been dead in the house for at least two weeks, and her department was treating the case as a homicide. She said no criminal charges would be filed in the case at least until the medical examiner had made a determination on cause of death.
The bodies were discovered about 10 a.m. by U.S. marshals who were serving an eviction notice at the two-story, blue-painted brick home at 4249 Sixth St. SE. A woman answered the door and let the three deputies into the home. When the deputies climbed the stairs to the top floor, they found the corpses, three in one bedroom and one in another, police said.
Sources have told The Examiner that Jacks’ husband died of cancer in April, and the electric power and water to the home had been cut off for months.
One witness said she saw U.S. Marshals handcuff a woman at the scene. The woman was lying on the ground talking to herself, said the neighbor, who asked not to be identified.
Residents of the Anacostia neighborhood gathered outside the yellow police tape that stretched all the way down the block and watched as the bodies were brought out in gurneys.
Pernell Hall, 24, said, “People don’t kill their own kids in Southeast. It’s just wrong. That doesn’t happen here.”
Leroy Smith, who lived six houses down, said he believed the mother and children moved into the home last spring, but he hadn’t seen the children since July. Other neighbors have told authorities that they last saw the children in early December.
Mayor Adrian Fenty and D.C. Council member Marion Barry questioned why the school system didn’t keep better track of the children.
Threeof the children had been enrolled in a charter school, and one was a D.C. high school student. But none of them had been in class since the spring.
“It is way too easy for people to move in and out of the school system without … [the District] having a record on that,” said Fenty, who took over the schools in June.
Staff Writer Michael Neibauer contributed to this report.
