Louann Bowers and Sinhue Johnson are facing child-endangerment charges. Bowers was reported missing from her home in East Berlin, Penn., in June 1993 when she was 16. She was gone for so long that her family declared here legally dead in 2004. However, during this time she had been raising a family and living with her uncle by marriage, Sinhue Johnson.
Investigators note that the children had been living for years in a dilapidated and unhealthy building without heat, electricity, water or functioning toilet and a leaky roof, according to court documents.
York City Police Detective First Class Dana Ward and a York County Children and Youth Services caseworker tracked down Bowers and her five children in an East York, Penn., motel room. They had been on the case since 2009 after they received an anonymous tip. Ward described the location where the children was found as a single “filth-covered room” of a condemned house.
The children are now in foster care, enrolled in school and receiving medical attention. Bowers, 33; and Johnson, 45, remain in York County Prison awaiting trial, each is charged with five counts of child endangerment. –torrance stephens, ph.d.
