The mother of two children who tragically died while sleeping in a van has spoken out for the first time.
Authorities recently confirmed that two young children lost their lives after spending the night in a van under freezing conditions in Detroit, Michigan.
The victims, a two-year-old girl and a nine-year-old boy, had been in the van along with their mother, another adult, and three other children when the heartbreaking incident occurred.
On the morning of Tuesday, February 11, the mother, identified as Tateona Williams, awoke to find her son and daughter unresponsive.
Despite being rushed to the hospital, both children were pronounced dead.
The children are believed to have died from exposure to hypothermia due to the freezing temperatures.
Now, their mother, 29-year-old Tateona Williams, has opened up about the heartbreaking moment she realized her nine-year-old son wasn’t breathing.
“I tried to give him CPR, I was just giving him CPR and kept saying, ‘Don’t leave me, don’t leave me, please,’” she tearfully recalled.
Speaking about her family’s struggles with housing, Williams told WXYZ 7 News Detroit, “I regret having to sleep out there so bad. I tell them, ‘I’m sorry, but I tried.’
“I tried to keep hotels. I tried to pay people to stay there [in hotels]. It wasn’t working for me.”
The van had been parked on the ninth floor of the Hollywood Casino parking garage around 1 a.m. on Monday (February 10), according to NBC News.
Williams expressed her deep grief, saying her “heart is breaking” over the loss of her two children, but she must keep going for the sake of her other kids.
Tamara Liberty Smith, director of the shelter where Williams, her mother, and her surviving children are currently staying, has vowed to support the family in their ongoing struggle with homelessness.
“I’m going to make sure that we provide all of the resources that she needs,” Smith told PEOPLE.
“The plan is to get them set straight. I feel that the city owes her that. I know that Tateona feels that the city failed. Housing is a really big issue, but in the midst of failing her, I feel that we owe her.”
She added, “She was doing all that she knew how as a mother to protect her children with no shelter because their vehicle was their shelter.”
This heartbreaking tragedy comes amid a growing homelessness crisis in the U.S.
According to an annual survey by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, more than 770,000 people were experiencing homelessness on a single night in January 2024, WMYD Detroit reported.
This marked an 18 percent increase from the same period in 2023.
