Grieving Detroit mother who lost two children to freezing temperatures says her pleas for help went unanswered
Before losing her children to hypothermia after sleeping in their van, this Detroit mother reached out for help — only to be met with silence.
Tateona Williams is mourning an unimaginable loss after her two young children died from hypothermia while sleeping in a van. In the wake of this tragedy, Williams says an outpouring of support has come her way — but now she’s left wondering where that help was when she needed it most.
“Everybody wants to help now that I’ve lost two kids,” Williams told The Detroit News. “I was asking for help. I feel like it wasn’t their time. I did everything I was supposed to do.”
Williams had reportedly been homeless for three months, living in a van with her four children. One freezing night, while parked in a casino parking garage, her van ran out of gas. When she went to wake up her 9-year-old son for school the next morning, she realized he wasn’t breathing.
“It was like a normal day … I woke them up to get them ready for school, and my son wasn’t moving. I kept saying, ‘Please get up. Please, please, for me, just get up. Don’t do this to me,’” she recounted to local news outlets.
As a certified nursing assistant and medical assistant, Williams immediately tried to perform CPR before a friend rushed them to the hospital. On the way, she discovered her 2-year-old daughter was also unresponsive.
“They brought her in right after they pronounced him dead … And they said she wasn’t breathing. And then they pronounced her dead too,” Williams said, her voice breaking. “She didn’t even get to live her life. She didn’t even get to do anything. She lost her life because I had to sleep in the car.”
“I regret having to sleep out there so bad,” she continued. “I tell them I’m sorry, but I tried. I tried to get hotels, I tried to pay people to stay there, but it wasn’t working.”
“I asked everybody for help. I called out of state, I called cities I didn’t know, I called cities people asked me to call. I even asked Detroit,” she added.
Williams said her children had everything “except a house,” a lack that she tried to avoid. When a family whom she had been staying with told her that she would need to find somewhere else to stay, she contacted Detroit’s homeless service department and had been in contact with them at least three times before her children’s tragic deaths. However, because her case was not considered an emergency, it was left unresolved.
In addition to city resources, Williams recalled reaching out to her children’s father, who she said “had an excuse every time.” She asked for the kids to stay with him.
“Maybe I asked the wrong people for help, but that was the only thing I did wrong,” she told Fox 2 Detroit.
Now, Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan is calling for a review of the city’s homeless outreach program through the Department of Housing Revitalization and Development. But for Williams, the response comes too late.
“It took my two kids dying for y’all to help me? It just doesn’t work like that,” she said. “Everybody’s got their opinions, but I know in my heart — and everyone who was around me knows — I loved those kids more than I loved myself. It hurts losing two kids in one night. I don’t wish this on anybody.”
Williams is now urging other struggling parents to seek help before it’s too late.
“If you can get help, please go get help because I don’t want anyone else to go through what I’m feeling,” she urged.
Williams’ cousin, Javeina Moorer, has launched a GoFundMe to support the grieving mother as she works to find a home for her and her remaining children.
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