Featured Image Credit: Instagram / @moms_of_truth
Topics: US News, Social Media, Crime, YouTube
Callum Jones
Topics: US News, Social Media, Crime, YouTube
The chilling 911 call which led to the arrest of parenting YouTuber Ruby Franke has since been released.
Franke rose to fame running the '8 Passengers' YouTube channel, which followed her family with her six children; Shari, Chad, Abby, Julie, Russell, and Eve.
However, the channel shut down earlier this year, amid speculation her children were being abused, which Franke has strongly denied as recently as 2020.
Franke was arrested on Wednesday (30 August) in Ivins, Utah, after officials said they'd discovered a malnourished child with visible injuries.
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The former YouTuber's business partner, Jodi Hildebrandt, was also arrested on similar charges.
According to a statement from the Santa Clara-Ivins Public Safety Department, officials received a report of a child in need of assistance at around 10:50am on Wednesday.
The statement described the child as being 'emaciated and malnourished, with open wounds and duct tape around the extremities'.
The child was taken to a local hospital, while officials found another malnourished child in a nearby home who was also taken to hospital.
Following a search of the house, four children were placed in the care of the Department of Child and Family Services.
According to an affidavit filed by an officer of the Santa Clara-Ivins Public Safety Department, Franke's 12-year-old son had climbed out of a window and run to a neighbors house to ask for food and water.
The document says the neighbor called law enforcement after seeing duct tape on the child's ankles and wrists, and that the other malnourished child officials took to hospital was Franke's 10-year-old daughter.
The moment the neighbor called 911 is now in the public domain, with the individual choking up on the phone after telling the dispatcher that Franke's 12-year-old son was 'covered in wounds', as per KUTV News, ABC News and the Deseret News.
In the 911 call, the neighbor says: "I just had a 12-year-old boy show up here at my front door asking for help, and he said he just came from a neighbor’s house.
"We know there’s been problems at this neighbor’s house. He’s emaciated, he’s got tape around his legs, he’s hungry and he’s thirsty."
He continued: "He’s very thirsty. I don’t think he needs an ambulance – I’ll let the cops decide that – but his ankles are taped up and he won’t tell us why. He has duct tape around each ankle. Yeah, there’s sores around them."
Deseret News also reports that the caller held back tears before concluding: "I think there’s a good chance he’s been ... oh, he’s got them around his wrists as well. OK, this boy has been, this kid has obviously been, I think he’s been detained. He’s obviously covered in wounds.
"He says what happened to him is his fault."