A sheriff’s deputy in Michigan is under investigation over his response to a call about a mother and her children who later froze to death in a field.
Monica Cannady, 35, and her sons Kyle, nine, and Malik, three, were found dead on Sunday in a field near Pontiac after wandering around the area for three days — the children only wearing sweatshirts and wrapped in bed sheets. Cannady, who police say was suffering a mental health episode, had reportedly ordered her three kids to hide from police and sleep in the field.
Her 10-year-old daughter was the only survivor and alerted neighbours in the area of her family’s deaths. At a press conference on Monday, Oakland County Sheriff Michael Bouchard said that deputies had responded to reports that the family was seen wandering and not appropriately dressed for the cold two days before the tragedy, but were unable to locate them after conducting separate searches.
On Wednesday, the department revealed that at least one of its deputies is now under investigation for not covering the full perimeter of an area where Cannady and the children were seen.
“A Deputy responded to the call for an area check but did not completely search the area as he was expected to and did not find or make contact with the family. His performance is now under investigation by the Sheriff’s Office Special Investigations Unit,” stated a review of the timeline of the events obtained by The Independent.
The department told The Independent on Thursday that the deputy’s name will not be released at this time pending the investigation.
Police said that two other searches meeting the department’s standards, albeit fruitless, were conducted by different deputies.
The review also revealed that law enforcement had several interactions with the family in the days leading up to their deaths and offered them help, but did not intervene further because Cannady “did not appear to be suffering from any medical or mental health crisis and asked several times to be left alone.”
The bodies were found on Sunday after Oakland County deputies were called to an overgrown field near Pontiac.
Deputies were alerted to the scene when Cannady’s oldest child knocked on a stranger’s door and said that “her family was dead in a field,” Mr Bouchard said, per Click On Detroit.
All three died of hypothermia, according to officials. The deaths have been ruled as accidental.
A GoFundMe page has been set up to support the survivor of the tragedy as well as pay for funeral expenses.
Officials said Cannady took her children out of their apartment the previous week and was convinced people were out to kill her, including police officers. The mother reportedly instructed her children to run or hide if anyone approached them, and told the family to lie down and go to sleep in the field where they ultimately died.
Mr Bouchard said the department analysed calls, radio traffic, canvas of the neighbourhood and deputies’ interactions with the family “that [could] potentially find ways to prevent such a tragedy in the future.”
The review found that local police attempted to assist Cannady several times on Friday after receiving calls from neighbours. They did not receive reports on Saturday or Sunday, before Cannady’s daughter alerted neighbours.
The family was first located by police around 1pm on Friday (13 January), but she asked to “be left alone.”
A second deputy approached while she was inside the McLaren Oakland Hospital in downtown Pontiac. She reportedly said her family was at the hospital for an appointment while being questioned “in-depth,” and left the facility after claiming she was waiting for a ride outside.
The same deputy followed her outside the hospital and reiterated that he would not ask for her identification and that she was not in trouble. The officer offered Cannady to go to the police station to get coats for the children, who were wearing sweatshirts and bed sheets, but she refused help.
Two hours later, Cannady visited her mother’s home before an argument erupted about her mental health. Cannady left the apartment and a welfare check was conducted at her own residence but she was not found.
Cannady’s family inquired investigators about ways to commit her to a mental health facility, but the department, which has more than 1,100 sworn deputies, did not link those reports to the encounters with the mother and her children.
Before the investigation was announced on Wednesday, Mr Bouchard had condemned the broken mental health system.
“From our side, we were not called about a person or kids in crisis,” Mr Bouchard said on Monday. “We would get an occasional call, ‘Hey, there’s somebody in the area that doesn’t look like they’re appropriately dressed.’ Deputies would go there and look, and they weren’t there.”
He added: “We later learned from the surviving daughter that [Cannady] had told her kids anytime anybody approached, to run.”
“This tragedy was fundamentally evidentiary of the breakdown of our mental health system in America.”
“We don’t give our mental health providers and systems enough support and have enough resources at their fingertips.”
