A quick-thinking North Carolina neighbor is being hailed as a hero after he and his friends burst into a filthy mobile home and stopped a mother from strangling her three young children, after she allegedly poured scalding hot wax on their heads and necks while calling them demons.
Adan Miranda was in the Browns Summit neighborhood Monday night when he heard blood-curdling screams coming from a home on Caseybrook Court.
“I heard a little baby scream, ‘Help me. Help me. She’s trying to kill us. Oh God,’” Miranda told local reporters in the chilling video that has since gone viral.
He and his friends didn’t hesitate. They rushed into the dark mobile home and found 40-year-old Sabrina Lauren Spruill holding down and suffocating her kids, ages 8, 7 and 4, one by one.
“We put two and two together quick and said we better go make sure there are no kids in there,” Miranda said. “We walked into the dark mobile home, and we see the lady strangling the kids, just suffocating them.”Court documents paint a nightmarish scene. Spruill allegedly poured hot wax on the children’s heads and necks while declaring she was trying to “get the devil out of them” and that she was “the chosen one.”
She also threatened to kill them and light them on fire, investigators say. The 4-year-old later told deputies, “My mom needs to go to jail because she hits us.”
The home was in horrific condition: extremely filthy and unsanitary, with a locked refrigerator that left the kids starving. There was no proper bedding. The children were malnourished, dirty and covered in bruises and scratches.
Spruill already had an open Child Protective Services case for alleged prior abuse.
Miranda didn’t hold back when describing the horror he witnessed.“It was really traumatic to say the least,” he said. “I don’t want that to take the spotlight away from these kids. They are the real champions of what happened last night. They had to endure so much pain from somebody you want nothing but love from.”
“No pain of mine compares to the pain of those kids. They were in a sense tortured.”
Deputies arrested Spruill on the spot. She now faces 13 charges: three counts each of assault by strangulation, assault on a child under 12, intentional child abuse inflicting serious bodily injury, and contributing to the delinquency of a juvenile, plus one count of communicating threats.
In court, it was revealed that the children were naked during some of the assaults. A judge later jacked her bond up to $250,000. If convicted, she could face decades behind bars.
Neighbors say the kids had previously hinted at trouble at home. One woman recalled the children telling her things about their mother, but nothing prepared anyone for this.
Miranda, still shaken, is getting widespread praise for acting when so many might have looked the other way.
“This is a big wakeup call,” he said. “You never know if your neighbors are going through it.”
The three children were taken to safety by EMS. Spruill remains jailed as the investigation continues.
