Any crime an adult commits against a child should be viewed as especially heinous, but there are certain abuses that are so sad, shockingly horrific and unthinkable that there isn’t any reaction that feels dramatic enough to appropriately express the rage and heartbreak one should feel after learning of them.
In Harris County, Texas, two Black boys reportedly watched their brother be beaten to death by their mother’s white boyfriend. Not only was a child killed gruesomely while his siblings suffered the trauma of witnessing it, but the surviving children were reportedly abandoned to live in the Houston-area apartment alone with their brother’s decomposing body for nearly a year, according to authorities.
Click 2 Houston reported that 32-year-old Brian Coulter is charged with murder for the death of 35-year-old Gloria Williams’ eight-year-old son Kendrick Lee, who he is accused of beating in the face, feet, buttocks, back, legs and groin until the life left the innocent child’s body.
Source: Harris County Sheriff’s Office / Handout
Williams, who by all accounts deserves no one’s sympathy and much of the blame for what happened to her son, was charged with injury to a child by omission, injury to a child causing serious bodily harm, and tampering with evidence.
The couple was taken into custody last Tuesday after the two witnesses, the 10-year-old and seven-year-old sons of Williams, described to law enforcement what happened to their brother and that they too were often physically beaten and abused by Coulter. The children said that after Coulter killed Kendrick, which investigators believe happened in November of last year, he laid the boy’s body out and covered it.
According to court documents, Williams previously saw her boyfriend punching Kendrick—who, again, was eight—in the face and she stopped him from continuing to beat him. The next morning, she reportedly found him dead under a blue blanket and confronted Coulter who told her he was sorry and that “he lost it” and had continued punching the child until he “went to sleep.”
Not only did Williams fail to protect her children from her horrifically abusive boyfriend, but, according to investigators, five of six months after Kendrick was killed, she and Coulter moved out of the apartment leaving the surviving children behind to live in squalor with the dead child’s remains still there. Those children who were left behind included Williams’ 15-year-old son who, after nearly a year, was able to overcome his fear and trauma at least enough to call the Harris County Sheriff’s Office on November 23, the day authorities found Kendrick’s remains.
“For many agency veterans, it was the most disturbing case they had worked in their entire law enforcement career,” Harris County Sheriff Ed Gonzalez said. “It seemed too horrific to be real.”
Deputies said the boys appeared malnourished and had physical injuries. The 10-year-old was reportedly punched in the jaw by Coulter during Kendrick’s killing and had sustained a serious injury that will need surgery, according to Gonzalez. All three boys were taken to the Texas Children’s Hospital to be treated.
Gonzalez said the children were left to fend for themselves in an unfurnished apartment with no beds or blankets, but plenty of flies and cockroaches. He also said there was evidence the children had been locked in different parts of the home at some point. None of the children had attended school since May 2020.
If the crimes committed against these three children weren’t egregious enough, Coulter and Williams were both granted bail as if either of them should ever see the light of day from outside of a prison cell ever again. They’re both still currently in lockup, but Coulter’s bail was set at $1,000,000 while Williams’ was set at $900,000.
In fact, according to Click 2, deputies questioned the couple on Monday, the day after the discovery of Kendrick’s body, and for unfathomable reasons, they were released later that day before being taken into custody the next day.
Does literally anyone care about the lives and wellbeing of these Black children?
In a recent interview with KHOU 11, Williams admitted to moving with Coulter to another apartment 25 miles away from where she left her grieving and severely traumatized children, but she claimed, as if it matters, that she “checked on them every two weeks.”
When asked if she realized her son was dead, the mother who had a total of six children said “no,” but according to court documents, “investigators said Williams altered, destroyed and concealed Kendrick’s body to get rid of evidence,” KHOU reported.
“My prayer is that the remaining children find the love, the support and the protection that they so desperately needed and deserved and that they have been missing for so long and I hope that their future is better than their past,” Gonzalez said.
There are no words for crimes like these.