SAN ANTONIO – A woman who says she is related to the family in a Bexar County child abuse case says she reported them to the state several times.
Samantha Feathers says she is sisters with Amanda Mann, who was arrested Sunday on several counts of child endangerment, along with her partner, Dustin Lawrence.
“The kids weren’t being fed. They were dirty. They weren’t being taken care of. There was drugs in the house,” Feathers claims.
The Bexar County Sheriff’s Office says Mann took a one-year-old girl to the hospital with severe burns and then left her.
The child later tested positive for meth, according to Sheriff Javier Salazar.
Investigators found two-month-old twins and a 2, 6, and 8-year-old living in what they describe as deplorable conditions.
According to Bexar County Jail records, Mann and Lawrence face charges of endangering a child, endangering a child risking bodily injury, injury to a child resulting in serious bodily injury-reckless, and four counts of abandoning/endangering a child with intent. Feathers says she attempted to follow up on her complaints to the State Child Abuse Hotline.
“A caseworker called me the next day. I mean, she was asking me all the stuff, and then I told her. And she said, ‘We’re going to investigate,’” she said about one of the times she called. “Then I called them back, and they said that they’re just going to make them go to a parenting drug class. So they could keep the babies because they don’t want to take the babies away from their parents.”
A spokesperson for CPS would not confirm if the agency has had any prior contact with the family, saying it was part of the investigation.
However, the spokesperson confirmed 6 children were taken into state custody.