Home > Abuse > Child Abuse > Child Neglect > Sheila And Paul Comer Get 15 Years For Starving Teen, Sending Him To California

Sheila And Paul Comer Get 15 Years For Starving Teen, Sending Him To California

March 1, 2013 at 11:29 am by Morbid

Georgia - Paul and Sheila Comer, the couple who imprisoned and starved Sheila’s son for three years before sticking him on a bus to California when he turned 18-years-old, were both sentenced to 15 years in prison.

The couple were arrested in September 2012 after being accused of locking Sheila’s teen son, Mitch, inside a bathroom and then a bedroom for three friggin’ years. He’d been isolated in the house for so long that his two younger sisters who lived there had forgotten what he looked like. They couldn’t even recall the color of Mitch’s hair.

When he turned 18,Paul Comer took him to a bus station with a ticket to California and a map of local homeless shelters. Afterwards, the couple threw away everything in the home that had anything to do with Mitch, including his baby shoes and pictures.

Mitch was found wandering a Los Angeles bus station by a former security guard who called police. Mitch was emaciated, stood 5-feet-1 and weighed only 89-pounds. He looked like a 12-year-old, according to police, and had translucent skin from not having been exposed to sunlight for years.

While Mitch informed the officers of the abuse he had suffered at the hands of his mother and stepfather, they gave him some crackers to eat. “It was pitiful,” said Dana Norman, assistant DA in Paulding. “He ate the crackers like they were the only thing he had left in the world.”

The following day, Sheila Comer and Paul Comer were arrested on on child cruelty charges and have been in jail ever since. In November of last year, a grand jury indicted the couple on 10 charges, including seven counts of cruelty to children. On Thursday the couple reached a plea agreement and pleaded guilty to cruelty charges.

It took a couple of weeks of negotiations between both sides to come to a conclusion everyone was happy with, but by pleading guilty, the couple will not face a possible 100 years behind bars. Also, their children will not have to endure a two week trial and the couple’s assets will be split between their children – including Mitch.

Speaking of Mitch, he refused to attend his parents’ sentencing as he chose to go to school that day instead. His whereabouts are not being released, but reports are he is back in Georgia and attends school. “He’s doing well, he’s thriving,” Paulding County District Attorney Dick Donovan said.

The Comer’s two young daughters have remained in protective custody, but are expected to go live with an uncle. The Comers have yet to explain why they did what they did aside from claiming they were trying to discipline an unruly child and that it was Mitch’s idea to go to California so he could be an actor.

Tags: California, Child Abuse, Crime, Georgia, Imprisonment, Mitch, Paul Comer, Sheil Comer, Starvation

41 Comments

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Sam

Well… it’s a lot better than some child murderers get, so i guess that’s something. I just hope the kid never has to interact with these scumbags again.
GGMon

I’m not a parent, I don’t have kids but isolating your child, starving him to near death and shipping him off to california is not disciplining a kid. Sending them to Military school, taking away their video games is disciplining. How the fuck you’re gonna use some bullshit excuse to defend your actions?
It’s pretty obvious they wanted nothing to do with him when they got rid of his things
EveryVillainIsLemons

I hope that all of the kids can heal and have healthy lives, but the boy got massively screwed over. He’ll probably never be as tall as he was genetically programmed to be, and he’ll have lifelong health issues of all sorts as a result of the abuse.

May they both die in prison, alone, forgotten, and hungry.
http://www.facebook.com/deadbolt85 debiate5

Stories like this boil my blood. Don’t these people know that having a child is the greatest blessing one can have bestowed on them?
Buffettgirl

I sure hope they spend the next 15 years on the verge of death by starvation. I’d bet there are going to be plenty of Bubba’s and Bertha’s in the prison system willing to help keep these two hungry for a spell…
Andyman

Unfortunately they don’t.
Andyman

I understand why plea agreements exist but to go from a possible 100 year sentence down to 15 (which means they will probably get out in less than half that) they sure did whittle down their sentence. No amount of jail time is enough in my eyes for the awful life this young boy suffered and the long road to recovery that lies ahead of him.
Eliza Berntsen

It could be worse- they could have sent him to Florida.
Wolf_of_Mars

Oh, they’ll be fed. Just not what they may have wanted to be on the menu. Maybe it will be what they want though.
Buffettgirl

If they have even one moment of pleasure in prison it will be two too many… then again I’m being a cranky bitch today, so maybe it’s me?
brandi

No.. your absolutely right. any happy time these fuckers get, they don’t deserve… 15, just pisses me off to no return…
brandi

I’m so fuckin pissed with their sentence, but it turned my mood around to know that he decided to skip their trial and go to school. after all the abuse and suffering, he’s still able to thrive with New life, as opposed to wallowing in sorrow and turning into a crazy himself. I hope he keeps flourishing and moving forward. and I wish his sperm donor and incubator starvation and poverty until they quit taken up all the good oxygen.
Buffettgirl

Right?
Tundratot

After all that isolation and abusie, throwing away all his belongings and traces of him? Baby pictures and shoes?! That’s probably the most pathetic, senseless, and damning thing they could do. Here’s hoping the kids return the favor by throwing away or burning everything that marked their parents’ lives on this earth.
Evan Oswald

good luck to you Mitch!
Jessica Stewart

I feel like his younger sisters must be pretty fucked up about this too. He can’t have been silent the whole time, and now they’ll be in foster care until they’re of age, it’s all just so sad.
Jessica Stewart

Seems really weird that they waited until they set him free to get rid of all his stuff that reminded them of him, tho….just bizarre.
cedric

When I read what these two assholes did to this kid it really burns
neenaP

Where is his father?
http://www.facebook.com/deadbolt85 debiate5

Sad, really. I’m a soon to be first time father, and I can’t even begin to imagine even thinking about treating my own child in such a shameful way.
Evan Oswald

hopefully finding out a way to have Paul gang fucked nightly in his cell….
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1616336316 Mary Mahi Mahi

There are no words to even express the outage felt my only wish is for both of these scumbags to get justice served behind bars by the hands of a fellow inmate. My second wish is that this young
man now a young adult may be able to recover physically from all the years of abuse growing full size
to live the rest of his years in peace away from his evil mother and vile stepfather. His emotional scars
will never heal.
G.I.R.L.

What in the world was wrong with them? Did they not want a boy? Thank heavens they’re getting some serious time.
G.I.R.L.

You’re not actually disciplining your child by sending him to military school, others are doing that for you. Besides, training your child to be a mini soldier doesn’t seem very prudent though i get your gist. They in no way were disciplining him; straight abuse.
onlyme356

To think that these two slimebags will have a better life in prison than Mitch did in his own home is unjust. I hope someone in prison realizes what they did to that boy and makes them truly suffer. There is absolutely no excuse in the world for this. Sickening, cruel and inhumane.
JohnQknowitall

The reason may have been enough in their sick brains to have done that to another person – especially a person she carried around inside her body for 9 months. Fortunately for them (and the rest of us in the US) that they live in a country civilized enough to believe that their behavior is not justified even in its penal system.
JohnQknowitall

Prisons, even the best, are horrible neighborhoods to live in with their own horrifying “justice systems.” Don’t concern yourself with the length of their punishment: three years or fifteen years will be daily torment… and at least they will get out young enough to contribute something like taxes to society to pay back at least part of the cost of their punishments.
http://www.facebook.com/deborah.stanger Deborah LaBarge Stanger

That child is damaged for the rest of his life because of these monsters. I hope he can gain strength emotionally as well as physically.
JGo555

I remember these fuckers. I hope they spend those 15 like that boy spent those 3.
midniteshadows

It’s a given that what happened to Mitch is beyond horror. But what really chilled my bones, was the fact that they got rid of everything associated with him. That is some serious hate to eradicate all traces of a human being from your life. As a mother let alone a human being, I can’t fathom a hate that deep for your own child.

At some point in Mitch’s life, his mother must have loved him to have kept his baby shoes and taken baby pictures. I’m sure his abuse began long before his confinement.
techsupp0rt

No no, you’re looking at it the wrong way! If they were in for 100 years, that’s 100 years (though they wouldn’t live that long) that they are being housed, fed, clothed, educated, and cared for. That’s far more than they allowed for their captive, that’s true, but look at them. Look how old and busted they are NOW. Now imagine 15 years of that having gone by, they’re likely still alive but old and busted, having absolutely nothing, and kicking their worthless asses back onto the street, maybe with a bus ticket and a map of homeless shelters!
Andyman

You’re right that does make me feel better. Perspective is the key! lol