A 28-year-old mother in Indiana was arrested last week for allegedly keeping her 3-year-old son in a freezing house with no heat for weeks, resulting in the child’s foot turning black from frostbite so severe that his leg may need to be amputated. Amber Griffith was taken into custody on Thursday and charged with two counts of felony neglect of a dependent resulting in serious bodily injury, court records reviewed by Law&Crime show.
“It’s certainly a disturbing case that our child abuse detectives are working,” Officer William Young of the Indianapolis Police Department told Indianapolis Fox affiliate WXIN.
According to court documents obtained by the station, Griffith brought her son with her to a hospital on Jan. 19 because she and the child were both experiencing foot pain. Temperatures that day and in the preceding days had dropped into single digits. However, when doctors examined the child, they reportedly found that the entirety of one of his feet had turned black due to severe frostbite.