Latania Funn was found guilty this week in Juvenile and Domestic Relations Court of contributing to the delinquency of a minor. She was sentenced to 60 days in jail, all but 10 of which were suspended.
The charges against the 43-year-old mother were filed because Funn left her 16- and 7-year-old children alone in a house the city code enforcement officials condemned as “uninhabitable due to unsanitary conditions.”
Detective Adrienne Miller, who was called to the home on Clifford Avenue to investigate the report of children left alone on Sept. 3, testified that Funn told her that she went to Las Vegas with her boyfriend for seven days and that she left $20 on the counter for the children.
Miller also testified that Funn told her different stories about who was supposed to be caring for the children. At one point, according to testimony, Funn said that her 21-year-old daughter was supposed to be in the home. She also said that her ex-husband, the children’s father, was caring for them.
The children’s father told The Gazette in an earlier interview that he had been trying to get someone to do something about the conditions in the home. “I have been paying child support, but the children called me all of the time because they were hungry and they had no clothes and didn’t know where their mother was,” he said.
CHILD PROTECTIVE SERVICES had also been made aware of the situation on at least four occasions in the past two years, according to sources close to the investigation. The father even made a video of the home more than one year ago. Code enforcement found no working toilets in the home, human feces on the floors, clothes piled throughout the home, including around a water heater, and generally filthy and uninhabitable conditions. Miller said that she found nice clothing in the mother’s closet.
The circumstances of the case led Assistant Commonwealth Attorney Cathryn Evans to ask that Funn receive the maximum sentence of one year in jail. Chief Juvenile and Domestic Relations Judge Stephen W. Rideout considered the mother’s disability (Multiple Sclerosis) and the fact that the children had been removed in handing down the lighter punishment. The children are with relatives.
THIS CASE LED City Manager Philip G. Sunderland to remove Meg O’Regan from her position as the director of the city’s Department of Human Services and to reassign her to other duties in city government. Considering time served because Funn had been held without bond since her arrest, she should have been released immediately.