Homeless Woman Who Lost 2 Of Her Children To Hypothermia Reached Out At Least 3 Times To Homeless Response Team For Help
Her situation was declared non-emergent, and she was given little resources for help.
Rawpixel.com | Shutterstock A mother's heartache from losing two of her children could have been prevented if outreach workers had done their jobs properly. According to records, a homeless woman had contacted her city’s homeless response team numerous times, asking for help.
Her most recent call was recorded just under three months before her children’s tragic deaths.
A homeless mother lost two of her children to what authorities suspect was hypothermia after they had been living in a van for months.
29-year-old Tateona Williams and four of her children had been facing homelessness for months. They had resorted to living in the family’s van, along with Tateona’s mother and two of her siblings.
On the evening of February 9, the mother pulled her van into the ninth floor of the Hollywood Casino parking garage in Detroit so that the family could get some sleep. Temperatures in the city that night had dipped to 10 degrees. At some point, while the family was asleep, the van experienced some kind of mechanical failure and stopped running. By the time Williams woke, she noticed that her 9-year-old son Darnell wasn’t breathing.
Williams called a friend to bring them to the hospital while her mother stayed behind with the remaining children. However, her mother noticed that her 2-year-old granddaughter, Amillah, was also unresponsive. The same friend rushed back to the parking garage to escort the toddler to the hospital.
Unfortunately, both children were pronounced dead after arriving. While autopsies are forthcoming, police suspect that the most likely cause of death was “exposure to hypothermia.” The surviving children are currently staying with relatives.
The homeless woman had contacted the city’s homeless response team multiple times seeking help.
According to Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan, Williams had reached out to homeless help centers in the city at least three times, with the most recent being late November 2024. "We have to make sure that we do everything possible to make sure that this doesn't happen again," Duggan said during a press conference at Detroit Police Headquarters the day after the tragedy. "I'm not trying to talk about an individual employee. I'm talking about the system as a whole. Are we doing everything to make sure people in the city know how to access this critical care?"
Duggan hopes to create a policy that would require outreach workers to make in-person visits to families with children facing homelessness. "We have got to do a better job of educating people that the service is there," he urged.
What makes the deaths of Williams' children even more tragic is the fact that there was shelter space available just a few miles away from the parking garage structure. According to Duggan, the city of Detroit has 34 homeless outreach workers, two employed by Detroit and 32 from six other funded providers, including Cass Community Social Services and Neighborhood Services Organization. Their job is to provide assistance and shelter to those in emergency situations. However, they did not deem Williams' situation as an emergency.
Unbeknownst to the mom, the city opened a drop-in center for families in need of shelter ahead of what was anticipated to be a brutal winter.
"At least as far as we’ve been able to determine so far, the family never called back for service. And as far as we’ve been able to tell, our homeless staff never proactively reached out to say, ‘What happened with your situation? Was it resolved?’ Or to indicate there might be room available,” Duggan shared.
Detroit has about 18 homeless shelters and warming centers, but not all of them accept families and children.
Detroit Rescue Mission Ministries has about 650 beds for those in need between its shelters and warming centers. Of those, 25 warming center beds are for women and children, and 35 warming center beds are for men.
Chad Audi, the CEO of Detroit Rescue Mission Ministries, reports that at least 460 shelter beds are designated for men. Still, he noted that the system in Detroit failed the entire family. "Somebody asked for help. You did not give her the support, and now the result of it is you (lost) two innocent lives. That's not acceptable," he said. Now, city officials are working harder to make help more accessible to anyone who may need it.
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"We've expanded the work of outreach teams ... They're out every day, meeting with unsheltered households, working to connect them to services such as shelter, housing," Schneider, director of the city's housing and revitalization department, revealed.
However, despite their current efforts, nothing they do will heal Williams' heartbreak or bring her kids back. No child should have to die as a result of homelessness to get city officials to finally listen and offer help that should’ve been there all along.
Megan Quinn is a staff writer with a bachelor's degree in English and a minor in Creative Writing. She covers news and lifestyle topics that focus on justice in the workplace, personal relationships, parenting debates, and the human experience.