The St. Bernard Parish Sheriff's Office is continuing to piece together the bizarre discovery of a malnourished 14-year-old boy found earlier this week in a cramped, foul-smelling mobile home in a rural section of the parish.
Deputies said the boy, who is in the custody of the state Department of Social Services, is still at a hospital receiving treatment for a foot infection but is recovering quickly. St. Bernard Parish Constable Tony Guerra stumbled upon the boy Wednesday while serving an eviction notice at a trailer park in eastern St. Bernard.
The boy weighed only 60 pounds, and police say he has not attended school or received medical treatment in more than four years. The father, Daniel Ballard, 30, was arrested and booked with cruelty to a juvenile.
The Sheriff's Office is expecting the boy's mother to arrive from Arizona sometime next week. It's unclear whether she has any custody documents to claim legal guardianship of the boy.
"Until we look at documents and see some facts, we can only go by what the boy and the father are telling us," said Sheriff's Office Chief Deputy James Pohlmann.
The boy gave detectives his mother's phone number, and she told police that she has been in contact with the boy off and on over the past few years. The woman, whose name was not released, told the Sheriff's Office that she put the boy on a plane from Arizona in 2005 for a short visit with his father.
From that point forward, Ballard kept the boy with him, although the mother told deputies over the phone that she has tried to get him back but could never track him down. She told police that Ballard often tightly restricted phone conversations and would never reveal their whereabouts.
The boy's name is not listed anywhere as a runaway or a kidnapping victim, Pohlmann said.
Both Ballard and the boy told deputies Wednesday that the swollen, discolored foot came after the boy had dropped a speaker on it earlier in the week at a storage building Ballard had on the West Bank.
Guerra, the constable who initially discovered the boy, said he also noticed what appeared to be an untreated fractured arm. Detectives in the juvenile division said the boy told them the injury was due to a past motorcycle accident. The boy said he was never taken in for medical treatment. The bone was never set properly, police said.
According to the initial police report of the incident, Ballard told deputies that he had not taken his son to a hospital or enrolled him in school because the boy didn't want to do either.
The report from Ballard's arrest Wednesday sheds light on deplorable living conditions inside the RV. The report details a "very strong, foul odor emanating from the inside of the trailer" and "numerous pieces of what appeared to be animal feces throughout the trailer floor." Deputies also noticed "there was no food in the trailer, no running water and only the air conditioner had electrical power," according to the police report.
Ballard and his son were also living with six dogs and one cat inside the cramped mobile home. The pets were taken to St. Bernard's animal shelter.
The owner of the mobile home park, Charles Fanz, said Ballard had only been living there for about a month. Bruce Jackson, a local justice of the peace, said he was told that Ballard's upkeep and living conditions were unacceptable.
Jackson later issued the eviction notice that prompted Guerra's discovery.
For now, detectives are still patching together Ballard's transient lifestyle throughout the New Orleans area for the past four years. Ballard said he made a living by cutting grass.
Detectives know the boy has lived throughout the New Orleans area since summer 2005, right before Hurricane Katrina. From initial conversations with the boy while at the hospital, detectives believe Ballard had only recently gotten the RV.
The two had lived in a trailer park on Airline Highway in Jefferson Parish before they moved to the Fanz Mobile Home Estates park last month. Detectives said the boy mentioned that Ballard had a girlfriend they lived with in a Metairie apartment at some point.
They also lived in a vacant building on the West Bank at one point, the boy told detectives.
Ballard does have an outstanding warrant in New Mexico for possession of marijuana, but criminal searches have turned up no warrants alleging kidnapping.
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Originally Posted by Tassa
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