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U.S. Marshals discover 4 bodies in southeast Washington home<
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AP Photo DCJM107, DCJM103<
By SARAH KARUSH=
Associated Press Writer=
WASHINGTON (AP) - Four young people lay dead in an apartment for weeks, if not months. In one of the city's poorest neighborhoods, it took an eviction notice for someone to realize it.
U.S. Marshals serving the notice on the Southeast Washington property Wednesday found the bodies - believed to be of females between 5 and 18 years old - after a routine search of the small, two-story brick building.
A woman who answered the door was taken into police custody for questioning. There are plenty of other questions to go around - for the city, for the schools, for child-welfare officials and for the neighborhood.
"Sometimes people say they don't want to get involved," said area resident Amena Pearson. "But you're talking about kids."
Pearson, 31, confronted District of Columbia Mayor Adrian Fenty after a news conference to ask how these children managed to slip though the cracks. He said it was being investigated.
School officials said none of the children believed to have been living in the home were enrolled in the system, though one had attended before withdrawing in 2006 as a fifth-grader.
"It is probably too easy in this system to not track young people from public schools to charter schools to home schooling," said Fenty, whose administration recently began overseeing the troubled school system.
Investigators believe the bodies had been there at least two weeks, but it was unclear exactly how and when the victims died, Police Chief Cathy Lanier said. The bodies were so badly decomposed they could not be identified.
"It is going to take scientific tests run by the chief medical examiner's office," Fenty said. Whether the deaths were homicides has yet to be determined.
The bodies were found upstairs in the apartment, part of a block of virtually identical apartment houses near Bolling Air Force Base, authorities said. Police said it was unclear whether the woman found at the house was related to the victims.
Larry Jones, who lives next door, said that in recent months he had noticed a "strange odor" coming through his vent.
"We thought it was probably dead mice in the vent or something," he said, adding that he had talked to the landlord about it.
Jones said a woman and two or three children live at the home but that he had not seen them since the summer. The children appeared healthy at the time, he said.
About one-third of the city's homicides last year occurred in the police district where the bodies were discovered, according to preliminary police statistics.
Area resident Rowand Simpkins said Wednesday that her neighbors tend to keep to themselves and that she never saw the woman or children.
"It's really a mystery," she said of the youths' deaths. "It's a sad situation."
Mindy Good, a spokeswoman for the D.C. Child and Family Services agency, said the agency received one report about the family at that home last April through the city's child abuse and neglect reporting hot line.
"We made several attempts to make contact with these people. We were unable to have any face to face contact with them," Good said. "On the last attempt (in early May), it appeared they were no longer living at the address."
Good said the agency found an address for the family in Maryland and alerted the county agency there of the report on the family. She would not specify where the family was living.
"This is a sick-making situation. It's a horrible thing," she said.
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Associated Press writers Karen Mahabir and Brett Zongker contributed to this report.

(Copyright 2008 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)