PRINCESS ANNE, Md. — A divorced father and the seven children he was trying to raise on a kitchen worker’s salary were poisoned in their sleep by carbon monoxide only days after the power company discovered a stolen meter and cut off electricity to their rental home, police said Tuesday.
Delmarva Power said it did not cut off the family’s electricity because they were behind on their bills but for safety reasons after discovering the illegal connection March 25.
Rodney Todd, 36, then bought a gas-powered generator and installed it in his kitchen. Friends and relatives last saw them alive March 28.
“The children were all in beds, and it appears as though they were sleeping,” Princess Anne Police Chief Scott Keller said.
Police found their bodies Monday after school workers, friends and Todd’s co-workers knocked on the door with no answer.
“I’m just numb. Like it’s a nightmare but it’s not,” the children’s mother, Tyisha Luneice Chambers, said Tuesday. “If I had known he was without electricity, I would have helped.”
Delmarva Power revealed that the rental home never had legal power while the Todds lived there.
Todd had received assistance with utility bills in the past but did not apply for help this year, said Tom VanLandingham, who directs the Office of Home Energy Programs in Somerset County.
