Home daycare owner tied kids to car seats and left them in dark rooms for hours, police say

MESQUITE, Texas -- Disturbing details are emerging in the arrest of a Texas home daycare owner accused of abusing the babies and toddlers she cared for.

KTVT reports that the father of a 6-month-old boy put a small camera on his child's car seat. What it revealed was horrifying. It showed Rebecca Anderson, 60, yanking his son out of the car seat, then feeding him something from a syringe.

After reviewing the footage, Mesquite police executed a search warrant of Anderson's home.

What police found was even more disturbing.



Three children were strapped to car seats in a dark bedroom closet and another was found in the master bathroom.

Police said the children had shoelace-like ligatures tied around their necks; some even had to be cut off.

Anderson told police she did this to limit their movement and left them there for up to seven hours a day. She also admitted to most likely giving Tylenol to the kids, reports KTVT.

Neighbors said sometimes when parents would drop their kids off, they would scream at the top of their lungs.

"It just kind of concerned me the way the kids sounded when the parents dropped them off," Susan Geldmeier said. "It alarmed me to where I was like ‘why are they sounding like that?’"

The Department of Family and Protective Services is investigating. Anderson is in jail charged with nine counts of child endangerment. Her bond was reduced to $45,000.

In the last three years, Anderson was cited for one deficiency during routine inspections by Texas Health and Human Services. She did not have an emergency preparedness plan in place.