Michigan mom accused of keeping 3 kids alone in squalor given US$250M bond

A sign from the City of Pontiac, Mich., is stuck to a window of a home in Pontiac, Mich., Sunday, Feb. 16, 2025. (Andy Morrison/Detroit News via AP)

PONTIAC, Mich. (AP) — A judge set a US$250 million bond Thursday for a Michigan woman who is accused of leaving three children alone for years in a house where conditions were so offensive that police evidence technicians wore hazmat suits.

Kelli Bryant, 34, shook her head at times during her first court appearance on child abuse charges in Oakland County. Her lawyer entered a not-guilty plea on her behalf.

Three children, ages 15, 13 and 12, were removed last week from a house in Pontiac where they had lived on their own since 2020 or 2021, amid trash and feces and occasional food drops on the porch, police said.

Defence attorney Cecilia Quirindongo-Baunsoe acknowledged the “very serious case,” but she said Bryant was not a risk to the community and could be released from jail with an electronic monitoring device.

Judge Ronda Fowlkes Gross, however, set the extraordinary cash bond and said Bryant was an “acute risk” to the public.

The children were hiding when police entered the home Friday after a call from the landlord, who had not been paid since October. Authorities said the toilet didn’t work and feces were found in the tub and other places. Bryant was living elsewhere in Pontiac.

“There’s a multitude of reasons why they didn’t leave the home,” prosecutor Karen McDonald said of the siblings. “We just don’t know that yet.”