Eviction Crew Makes Grisly Discovery in Freezer

A crew acting under a court order to evict a Detroit woman for alleged failure to pay several months rent made a grisly discovery Tuesday when they opened a freezer and found the bodies of two children, an 11-year-old boy and a 15-year-old girl.

The children’s mother, Mitchelle Blair 35, was taken into custody on suspicion of child abuse. Police are expected to submit information to prosecutors today or Thursday after autopsy reports confirm how the children died, the Detroit Free Press reports.

The discovery has shocked residents the Martin Luther King Apartments on St. Aubin, just east of downtown, where neighbors described Blair as “a beautiful person” who was “just going through some things.”

The Detroit News quoted police sources close to the investigation who said the children’s mother, had confessed to killing her children after learning they had sexually molested a young relative.

Sources also said Blair’s other two children, ages 17 and 11, knew their younger siblings’ bodies were in the freezer, The Detroit News said. The boy had been dead for about two years, and the girl died in May 2014, according to the report.

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The older children have been placed in protective custody.

Some neighbors told reporters they hadn’t seen the younger children for so long that they assumed they were living with relatives, as Blair reportedly told them. Others counseled Blair about isolating her children, who were homeschooled and not enrolled in Detroit Public Schools.

Blair reportedly wanted to keep them safe from potential abusers.

“I told her, ‘You can’t alienate those kids and keep them in there like that,’ ” Carol King, a friend of Blair’s, told the Detroit Free Press.

King described Blair as “the sweetest thing” who has “the heart of an angel,” but said she is also capable of displays of intense rage.

Rocky Ashford, 18, told the Free Press he has lived in the low-income housing development his entire life.

“I never saw them outside, to the point where I thought that they actually moved out,” he said.

The autopsies will be performed once the bodies have naturally thawed, a spokesman for the Wayne County Medical Examiner’s Office said in an email to the Free Press.

“Autopsies can’t be completed while the bodies are still frozen,” Ryan Bridges said. “We monitor the thawing process while allowing them to thaw naturally so any potential evidence can be preserved.”

Blair’s public persona is that of a loving mother. She posted a meme on her Facebook page on Jan. 30 that read “there is no greater blessing than being called Mom and declared on her profile that she is “loyal to my babies.”

“It’s just very, very sad,” said court officer Lee Gordon, who was part of the eviction crew that made the discovery. “It’s a sad situation.”

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