DALLAS – A Dallas woman and her boyfriend were facing charges after police found her 6-year-old grandson tied up in a shed.
After receiving a tip Sunday night, police arrived at the home and performed a welfare check.
The child’s grandmother, 53-year-old Esmeralda Lira, told them the child was with his mother, but a man living in the back of the property pointed police to the shed.
Officers found the boy with his hands tied behind his back. Lira claimed that it was the first time they put him in the shed but her live-in boyfriend, 64-year-old Jose Balderas, said the boy was being punished for two weeks for stealing food.
The child told police he had been forced to sleep in the shed, and the abuse started around the time he “got out of school for this corona thing.”
Lira and Balderas both faced felony charges for endangering a child.
The boy, his seven-year-old sister, and four-year-old brother were removed from the house.
(KETK contributed to this report)
