Toddler found alone, covered in flies, at Panhandle home filled with dirty diapers

Toddler found alone, covered in flies, at Panhandle home filled with dirty diapers

A 2-year-old was found alone, locked in a room, dirty and covered in flies inside a Fort Walton Beach home, according to police.

The Fort Walton Beach Police Department said officers went to the home Saturday on a welfare call.

Arriving at the home, they found the child slapping a window and “appearing dirty with multiple flies on him,” according to a release from the police department.

Once officers determined no one else was in the home, they entered the residence and found the child inside a room with “feces on the walls, mounds of soiled diapers, an extreme amount of insect activity, and the bedroom door was locked from the outside,” according to the release.

The child was taken to a nearby hospital with what police described as non-life-threatening injuries and admitted to the hospital for further treatment.

Roughly six hours later, the child’s parents — 22-year-old Tyler Matthew Piringer and 21-year-old Diamond Atkinson — were taken into custody as they returned from shopping, according to police.

They have both been charged with aggravated child abuse and child neglect. Both remained in in the Okaloosa County Jail as of Tuesday afternoon under $10,000 bond each.