Overview
- Police responded Monday to reports of unsupervised children covered in filth near Spruce and Short streets in Irwin, finding one child injured.
- An older child told officers their mother, Marah S. Urch, had left to attend a softball game and directed an 11-year-old to watch five younger siblings.
- A search warrant executed Tuesday documented rotting food, human and animal feces, trash, dirty diapers, and a pervasive urine odor inside the Short Street home.
- Officials say the water service had been shut off since June, and a caseworker reported four canceled check-ins and restricted access to the residence.
- Humane officers removed seven cats, six dogs, and two ferrets and found two dead cats and a dead hermit crab, while Urch remains jailed at Westmoreland County Prison as the younger children stay with their father and the older ones are in protective custody.