Disturbing police bodycam footage shows the moment when Las Vegas officers entered an extended-stay apartment on June 11 to rescue six abused kids.
The footage, first obtained by 8NewsNow, shows multiple children in the apartment, with two locked in a small dog cage, one of whom had been severely beaten. Police used bolt cutters to open the padlock keeping the children in the cage and spoke to the child with severe injuries, who said he hadn’t eaten in days.
The discovery came after police were called to a convenience store across the street earlier in the day. There, they met a woman later identified as Amanda Stamper, 33, who said she was hiding from her husband because “he threatened to kill her,” according to court transcripts obtained by the TV station. Stamper then told police about the children in the apartment, saying her husband beat the children with “belts, extension cords, skillets, his hands and feet,” according to court transcripts. She told police that “the children are covered with marks from their neck down.”
Bodycam footage shows police trying to get a young child to open the door so they can conduct a wellness check. The child refuses to unlatch the door chain until a maintenance worker comes over and convinces them to do so. Police then entered the home and found six kids, with two padlocked in the dog cage. One of the children in the cage had “two black eyes that were swollen shut, multiple marks and bruises all over his body, and he was emaciated,” police said.
Stamper was a prostitute who worked under her husband, Travis Doss, 31, who claims to be a rapper, the New York Post reported. Doss was the father of all six children and had a seventh child with Stamper, who is also pregnant.
Doss reportedly told the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police that he believed the injured 11-year-old locked in the cage was already dead. The day before police rescued the children, Doss allegedly told Stamper that he thought he “kicked him in the head too hard.” Stamper reportedly told police that she thought the child “looked dead for the last five days.”
The child is alive and receiving medical care at an undisclosed location.
The bodycam footage shows the child telling police that his father “hit my face in the cage because I was squished up trying to get out of the cage because I didn’t do anything and I was freaking out.”
A detective told a grand jury that the severely beaten child told police that he hadn’t eaten in days.
“He kept saying that he was always hungry and that’s why he stole and then he said it’s food that’s in the trash can so how is that even stealing,” the detective said. “And he kept saying that he needed big food because he was a big boy now and that he would have to share like one large fry from McDonald’s with like all six kids, his six siblings I mean, and just that he was never really fed and that’s why he stole.”
A prosecutor asked the detective how long the child had been locked in the cage, to which the detective responded “All day every day.”
“He said too long,” the detective added.
Doss and Stamper were both arrested for child abuse. Stamper’s public defender said she couldn’t do anything because she “would have been subjected to serious, serious abuse,” at the hands of Doss. Even Doss said he never saw Stamper hit the children. Stamper was, however, aware of the abuse and is being held without bail due to a probation violation. Doss’ bail was set at $500,000 after he was indicted by a grand jury.
Stamper and Doss have pleaded not guilty.
You can see the police bodycam footage below. WARNING: Graphic Content.
