The mother of two Michigan children who died of hypothermia while sleeping in a freezing van claimed to have long sought help, saying she “tried her best.”
Tateona Williams and her four children have spent the past three months living in a van. When she awoke this week, two of her children, ages two and nine, had not responded. Later, they were declared dead from what appeared to be hypothermia.
The family’s van ran out of gas during the night, with temperatures below freezing. “I lost the person who made me a mother. “And I lost a two-year-old,” Williams said through tears. “I am dying inside. It hurts. My heart feels like it is breaking. But I have two more children to care for.”
For Williams, the journey has been long, and the fight ahead is even more challenging. “I really regret having to sleep out there. I say, ‘I’m sorry, but I tried.’ I tried to keep the hotels.
I tried to pay people to stay there [at hotels]. “It wasn’t working for me,” she explained. On Monday, the family went to bed around one a.m. after parking in the Hollywood Casino’s Greektown parking garage.
Williams claimed that when she awoke, her 9-year-old child was not breathing. “I tried to give him CPR, I was just giving him CPR and kept saying, ‘Don’t leave me, don’t leave me please,'” she told me.
Williams noticed that her two-year-old child was not responding. The hospital later pronounced both toddlers dead. “She didn’t even get to live her life, she didn’t even get to do nothing,” Williams went on.
“She lost her life because I had to sleep in a car.” Williams called the city’s homeless response team in November, but nothing happened, according to Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan and other municipal officials at a press conference.
“As far as we know, the family never called again for service. And, as far as we can tell, our homeless staff never proactively reached out to inquire, ‘What happened with your situation, was it resolved?'” Mayor Mike Duggan said.
Duggan has now demanded that the city’s homeless services be reviewed. Her two surviving children are with family, and Williams is currently staying at a homeless shelter.
“It took the death of my two children for you to help me? “It doesn’t work that way,” she said. “It hurt to lose two kids in one night. You know, I wouldn’t wish this on anyone, and if you can get help, please do so, because I don’t want anyone else to go through what I’m going through.”
