Marina Vouk, 27, and 41-year-old Igor Kotsopey are the parents of a 14-month-old baby — but that baby is now in the custody in the state of Connecticut because of the horrifying conditions that police found when they were called to the couple’s home in Stamford, where they uncovered what the city’s police department described in a statement as “one of the worse neglect cases this unit has seen.”
But it was not only the child who was found in desperate condition when police arrived at the home on September 28. Marina Vouk called 911 asking for help that day, and when officers arrived they found the child’s mom in an extremely dehydrated and malnourished condition, in need of immediate medical help.
And where was the dad when police go there and found the alarming scene?
Igor Kotsopey was discovered outside the home, face down on the sidewalk — unconscious and drunk, according to a Hartford Courant report.
But while the parents clearly had their own issues with alcohol abuse, the baby did not choose the conditions to which the little boy was subjected — conditions that police said could have proven “tragic” if Vouk had not picked up the phone to dial 911 when she did.
Police said that when they showed up at the Vouk and Kotsopey home, the scene they found was one of “total disarray.” Garbage, debris, and perhaps most telling, empty booze bottles, were strewn throughout the apartment.
Given the condition of the place, it was perhaps not surprising that police reported “a foul smell” permeating the air inside the home.
That source of that smell was at least partly the baby’s own crib. Medics on the scene found the little boy wearing a diaper that had not been changed in an indeterminate amount of time. Not only did feces fill the child’s diaper, but his skin was smeared with excrement and there were even pieces in his hair.
The baby’s crib was infested with flies, and the child had ants crawling all over his body, according to a report in The Stamford Advocate newspaper.
Police quickly brought in the state’s Department of Children and Family Services, who removed the child from the home of Marina Vouk and Igor Kotsopey. The baby was taken in an ambulance directly to Stamford Hospital, where medical professionals immediately gave the little boy three containers of milk.
The starving baby “devoured” the food, Stamford Police Lieutenant Diedrich Hohn said.
The parents also received medical attention of their own. Vouk was confined to a hospital for eight days after being found by police in her malnourished state. When she was released on Tuesday, police arrested her.
Kotsopey remained in the hospital for a week — but he was also arrested when he was let out on Monday after being treated for what authorities described only as “his ailments,” though presumably those ailments had some relation to his extremely intoxicated state when he turned up passed out on Shippan Avenue in Stamford on September 28.
Vouk was treated for “several medical conditions.” But as soon as she was let out of the hospital on Tuesday, she was taken straight to a police station where she was booked on charges of risking injury to a minor.
Kotsopey was also charged with the risk of injury to a minor, and was held on a $25,000 bond .
“We hope the parents get the proper care and counseling needed to care for a child,” said Hohn in the Stamford Police Department statement on the Marina Vouk and Igor Kotsopey child neglect case. “It was fortunate that the child was found when he was or the next call could have been much more tragic.”
[Images: Stamford Police Department / Stamford Hospital]