A Wisconsin father accused of starving his 12-year-old son to death was captured on Sunday, months after the boy’s older brother found his sibling’s decomposing body.
Romuan Moye was arrested and charged with several child neglect felonies, including failure to report the death of a child and reckless homicide in the death of his son. Milwaukee police said the boy was starved to death, according to court records and a criminal complaint obtained by HuffPost.
Media outlets have identified the boy as Jacarie Robinson. According to the criminal complaint against his father, Robinson’s 22-year-old brother arrived at the father’s Milwaukee home on Oct. 10 to find his younger brother dead.
Jacarie’s brother entered his father’s home and was “immediately struck” by a strong odor, then discovered “a human foot protruding from covers on the living room floor,” the complaint stated, citing a police officer’s interview with the brother.
When the 22-year-old pulled the covers back, he found Jacarie already dead and “his face eaten up,” the document said.
“I don’t even know how to fucking feel right now,” the brother told police during his interview. Police noted in the document that Jacarie’s body was in an “advanced state of decomposition.” Maggots covered his face, and there were several drops of dried blood towards his feet. A police detective noted that the boy appeared to be “extremely malnourished.”
During his interview with police, the brother said their father had kept Jacarie away from the family for months and would not let him leave the home, according to the complaint. The last time the older brother saw his younger sibling alive was on Aug. 19, he told police.
According to the document, on the rare occasion that the older brother saw Jacarie, he would “often appear sullen” and never happy.
Investigators who searched the home were met with an “overwhelming smell of mold, feces, and decay,” according to the complaint. Detectives also noted large piles of garbage scattered everywhere inside the home.
Jacarie’s mother told police that his two other siblings were living with her in the weeks leading up to the discovery and that she had not seen Jacarie in person in three years.
The mother also said Moye had called her within the past several weeks to inform her that Jacarie was being punished because he was misbehaving and stealing food, according to the complaint.
Michael Driscoll, a detective with the Milwaukee Police Department, told CBS affiliate WDJT-TV in Milwaukee that Moye was wanted for questioning but “disappeared” following the discovery of the body.
“He left the house that night and has not been seen since,” Driscoll told the TV station. Milwaukee police found Moye last weekend after following a tip from an outside source.
“What we thought was maybe a really small investigative lead for us ... ended up pointing us in the right direction,” Thomas Kotnik, an officer with the Milwaukee Police Department’s fugitive apprehension division, told WDJT-TV.
According to court records reviewed by HuffPost, Romuan Moye was ordered to have no contact with his surviving children. An attorney listed as Moye’s representative did not immediate respond to HuffPost’s request for a comment.