Mom left kids, baby alone to shop, then a fire started. She’s guilty of endangering them
A Wichita mother who left her three young children home alone to go Christmas shopping — a situation that might have been deadly if police hadn’t rescued them after a kitchen fire started — has pleaded guilty to three misdemeanor counts of endangering a child, court records show.
Dekilah N. Sellers, 25, was immediately sentenced on May 22 to a year of probation. If she violates the conditions of her probation, which includes maintaining a full-time job and avoiding alcohol and drugs, a judge could order her to serve a year in jail, a journal entry in her case says.
The probation conditions Sellers must follow include maintaining a full-time job, avoiding alcohol and drugs, staying in Kansas unless she has the court’s permission to leave and staying away from criminals, court records show.
Her jury trial had been scheduled to start Monday.
Wichita police have said Sellers left her three children – 4, 2 and 3 months old – by themselves at home on Dec. 21, 2022, so she could go buy Christmas gifts. Officers who were responding to a domestic violence call nearby shortly before 1 p.m. saw her 4-year-old son standing on her porch crying at the door and detoured to check on him.
Initially, the police officers thought the boy might have been locked out of the house. But when the officers opened the door, they were met with a cloud of black smoke from a fire that had ignited in the kitchen.
The officers rescued Sellers’ toddler son, who was sitting alone on a couch, and her infant daughter, who was alone in a back room, from the house.
Police said previously the children trapped in the home would have died from smoke inhalation had officers not seen their older brother on the porch and responded so quickly.
All of the kids needed medical treatment for smoke inhalation.
Sellers did not return home until 45 minutes after police found the children.
