ODD LORI GARDNER FORCED SON TO SLEEP IN COFFIN
 |
| GARDNER |
 |
| COFFIN |
In the pitch black, bug-infested basement of a condemned house, cops found a crying seven-year-old boy who had been forced to sleep in a coffin.
The boy, when found, apparently had not eaten dinner and asked the police if they had come to help him before going on to describe to police nightmarish living conditions in his Scranton, PA, home.
According to the Times Tribune he told police that his mom Lori Gardner, 26 and stepfather, Brian Sleboda, 31, had often locked him inside a home-made wooden coffin.
He said the couple would “often” punish him by putting him in the dark basement right after telling him that ghosts live there.
The couple then would “pick up chains and drop them to scare him,” the paper reported.
The child told police he sometimes was locked in the basement the whole day, police said, and he had to wear the diaper because there is no working bathroom in the basement.
Both Gardner and Sleboda face felony counts of endangering the welfare of a child and unlawful restraint, but reportedly denied claims that the boy was locked in their basement but admitted that he was put there for punishment.
