Detroit Police Department records, now public, paint a stark picture of how a family living in a van inside the Greektown casino garage slipped past the safety net. The documents say the mother of 9-year-old Darnell Currie Jr. and 2-year-old A’millah Currie did not reach out to her children’s school or to state child-welfare officials for help in the months before both children were found unresponsive on Feb. 10, 2025. Autopsies later determined they died from carbon-monoxide exposure. Taken together, the police file and related records outline missed calls, failed follow-ups and outreach attempts that city officials say exposed real gaps in how agencies track families living in vehicles.
What the DPD report says
According to a Detroit Police report obtained by The Detroit News, investigators wrote that the children’s mother, identified as 29-year-old Tateona Williams, never contacted the Detroit school district’s social-services unit and did not get in touch with the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services specialist who had already been assigned to her family.
The report also says staff at Ralph J. Bunche Elementary documented 26 absences for the siblings starting in September 2024. Separately, shelter intake workers who initially offered the family temporary housing in December 2023 were unable to connect with them afterward, according to the same records.
What investigators found at the scene
The Wayne County Prosecutor’s Office says tests run after law enforcement seized the family’s 2010 Chrysler Town & Country detected a carbon-monoxide leak within minutes of restarting the van with a new battery. Wayne County’s medical examiner later certified carbon-monoxide toxicity as the cause of death.
Wayne County Prosecutor’s Office materials and local reporting describe the van, which the family had been living in, as unsanitary, with trash and other hazards inside. Those scene details, combined with surveillance footage from the Greektown garage and interviews with witnesses and family, formed the backbone of a months-long review of the case after the February 2025 deaths…