Parents of five children have been arrested after police said they were locked in a room that 'functioned a a dungeon' with surveillance cameras and dead bolts to prevent them from escaping.
Pennsylvania State Police said they were first called to James Russell, 65, and Carly Kahl's, 41, home in Redstone Township on August 8 to assist Fayette County Children and Youth Services, which had received a complaint about children living in 'deplorable conditions,' KDKA reports.
When they arrived, the troopers found that the children - ranging in age between five and 14 - had been sequestered to a bedroom with boarded-up windows, feces covering the walls, fleas, a limited amount of food and clothing and no beds.
'It's sickening - that's the only word that I can use to describe what we saw and what those children went through,' Trooper Ally Wilson told WTAE.
A criminal complaint alleges that the children's father would trap his children inside the room by locking the bedroom door from the outside all night and through part of the day.
