Infant starves after mother dies of natural causes

Janelle Browning, age 43, died of natural causes in her apartment in Omaha, shortly before Christmas. She had not been feeling well. It appears she fell asleep on the sofa, and simply never woke up again.

Her 21-month-old son, Ezekial, wasn’t old enough to use the phone for help. Their only neighbor was rarely home, so no one was there to hear little Zeke’s crying. He foraged through the apartment for food, but since he was so young, he was unable to fend for himself at all.

Little Ezekial starved to death. Nobody even knew anything was wrong, until weeks later when the landlord came to collect the rent.

This story really hits home. When I was a baby, and my brother was two and a half, our mother abandoned us. She simply left us alone to go on a drunk with some man, and didn’t come back. My brother took my bottle to the neighbors to get them to fill it up with milk when I would cry. He tried to change my diapers, but that was back when everybody used cloth diapers secured with safety pins.

Surprisingly, this did not raise eyebrows for any of the neighbors. No one thought anything was wrong when there were no adults to be seen, a baby is crying constantly, and the baby’s toddler brother is taking a baby bottle to them, asking them to fill it up with milk and asking them for cereal for himself. Apparently they thought our mother was just laid up drunk, not realizing that there was no one taking care of us.

I have been told that when I would cry, my brother would hug me and tell me, “Don’t cry, sissy. Mommy will be home soon, and then we’ll have cake”.

In the end, we survived only because our grandmother realized she hadn’t seen any of us in over a week, and came over to check on us. We were both hospitalized, but survived.

It is due only to pure luck (and the love and ingenuity of my older brother) that I didn’t end up just like poor little Ezekial.

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Source: Omaha Family Heartbroken