Florida's attorney general announced he will seek the death penalty against two adults charged with confining four young children inside a tractor-trailer cab for more than six years, subjecting them to alleged sexual abuse, beatings, and conditions so severe the children could barely walk.
Attorney General James Uthmeier held a news conference in Kissimmee on September 1 and laid out a case that his own team called one of the worst they have ever worked. Keisha Monique Epps, 51, a long-haul truck driver, and her fiancé Tamra Marshon Stewart, 37, were arrested August 6 and remain in Duval County Jail. The four children, two five-year-olds, a six-year-old, and a nine-year-old, two girls and two boys, were allegedly locked inside the cab of Epps's truck while she ran a route between Miami and Atlanta.
The children were forced to use the bathroom in cups and paper bags. They were denied showers. They received no medical care, no dental care, and no schooling for roughly five years. All four shared a single bunk so small they had to lie curled up side by side. A detective who encountered the children reported they were "walking with an unnatural gait from being confined to the cab."
When Epps stopped the truck to shower or use a restroom, she went inside. The children stayed locked in what Uthmeier called "this rolling dungeon."
Stewart told investigators he had committed three sexual batteries against one of the girls. One child was found to have an untreated sexually transmitted infection. Two children suffered untreated burns that left permanent scarring. One of the girls recalled burning herself badly with cooked noodles and never being taken for medical treatment.
She told investigators, simply: "There was a lot of blood."
When two of the boys confronted Stewart about the abuse, he allegedly beat them by punching them in their heads. Epps, according to the attorney general's office, witnessed the sexual abuse, called one child derogatory names, and continued to leave the children alone with Stewart. The confinement began as early as December 2019, the New York Post reported.
Uthmeier did not mince words at the news conference.
"These children were trapped in a rolling prison and abused by the adults who were supposed to protect them."
He went further, framing the case as a signal to anyone who would harm children in his state.
"We will pursue with everything we have the death penalty. We will seek executions, if you want to come in here [in Florida] and you want to physically molest, abuse, and violate our little kids."
Stewart faces ten charges: two counts of sexual battery by a person in familial or custodial authority, two counts of lewd or lascivious molestation of a child under 12, two counts of battery by expelling certain fluids or materials, two counts of child neglect without great bodily harm, and two counts of child neglect causing permanent disfigurement.
Epps faces twelve charges: two counts of sexual battery by a person in familial or custodial authority, two counts of lewd or lascivious molestation of a child under 12, two counts of child neglect without great bodily harm, two counts of child neglect causing permanent disfigurement, and four counts of failure to report child abuse.
Florida law allows prosecutors to seek the death penalty for adults convicted of sexual battery against a child younger than 12. Fox News reported that under the same statute, conviction can also carry life in prison without parole.
Uthmeier called the case "one of, if not the most, horrific that my team has ever had to work on."
Stewart is represented by the Duval County Office of the Public Defender. Epps is represented by Florida's Office of Criminal Conflict and Civil Regional Counsel. Neither office responded to a request for comment before publication. No trial date has been set.
Key questions remain unanswered. The relationship between the defendants and the four children, whether biological, custodial, or otherwise, has not been publicly clarified. How the case came to light, who reported it, and which law enforcement agency led the investigation have not been disclosed. The current whereabouts and care status of the children are unknown.
What is known is that four children spent years locked in a space barely large enough to sleep in, denied every basic need a child has, school, sunlight, medical treatment, safety, while two adults allegedly used them and discarded their welfare entirely. Uthmeier's decision to pursue the ultimate penalty reflects a straightforward principle: when the state's youngest and most defenseless residents are failed this completely by the people responsible for them, the law should answer with its full weight.
Florida says it intends to. The rest is up to a jury.
