When the 12-year-old got off the school bus on Friday afternoon in Copperas Cove, Texas, he expected the usual routine: maybe a snack, a bit of TV, a chat with his mum. Instead he stepped into an apartment off Primrose Drive that was eerily silent and completely emptied out. The furniture was gone. His mother, Erica Renee Sanders, and her boyfriend, Keven Dwayne Adams, were nowhere to be found.
As he stood alone amid bare walls and an empty living space, confusion turned to fear. He told a neighbour what he’d discovered, and the neighbour called the police. When officers arrived, they say the boy explained that his mother and Adams had at times spoken about moving “someday,” but he had absolutely no idea that move would come that Friday—while he was at school.
The investigation reveals that officers tried reaching Sanders and Adams by phone, and were told the boy was supposed to be “picked up by his uncle.” But when police contacted the uncle, he said he had no knowledge of any such arrangement. Meanwhile, when asked for their new address, neither Sanders nor Adams would disclose it—even when urged by the state’s Child Protective Services.
In addition, the neighbour told police that the boy had been kicked out of the house on multiple occasions in the past—a troubling history of instability. During questioning, Adams is reported to have “complained at length” about the boy, while Sanders claimed the move was simply a shift in living arrangements.
After hours of scrambling, the apartment was empty, the child alone, the adults unaccounted for. Police finally arrested Sanders and Adams and charged them both with abandoning or endangering a child without intent to return.
At the end of the day, the boy was placed in the care of his mother’s brother—but the emotional impact of walking into an empty home and realizing everything had changed without warning will likely linger far longer than the move itself.
