3-YO-Boy Calls 911 And Says “Mom Sleeps All Day” ,Then Cops Shocked Seeing What’s Really Going On
Oliver Harper was only three and a half years old, and his mother, Natalie, thirty-six, had been living alone in a small apartment on the outskirts of London since the child came into the world. His birth meant the beginning and the end of many things in Natalie’s life. As soon as she found out she had become pregnant and made the decision to give birth to her son despite the scarce economic resources they had, her husband and the father of the child made the decision to abandon them both without even saying goodbye.
From that moment, and after giving birth to her son Oliver with the only company of her father—the boy’s grandfather—Natalie had to face the harsh reality of being a single mother in a society built around married life and marriage. The city of London is for many a dream destination, a city full of charms and tourist attractions to spend time and money on during a vacation. For Natalie, it was the loneliest, gravest place on the planet, and every day was a struggle to get by and raise her son single-handedly.
“It would be easier if you had found someone to rebuild your life with. A child needs a mother and a father, Natalie. What are you going to do when Oliver starts asking about his father? As soon as he starts school, he’ll realize that there’s something in his life that’s not right. He’ll realize that the other kids have a family and he doesn’t,” her father scolded her harshly on more than one occasion when Oliver was still a baby.
“Oliver already has a family. He has me and doesn’t need anyone else,” she defended herself fiercely, settling the matter and moving on with her life.
With this determination, for the first three years after becoming a mother, Natalie tried her best to keep her promise to give her son a good life and to curry favor in a society where a single mother is considered a flaw in the system that should never have existed. It wasn’t easy, but she finally managed to find a steady job cleaning high schools in the mornings, which allowed her to pay the rent for a modest apartment in the suburbs and take care of Oliver without relying on the help of others.
Oliver turned out to be as kind and intelligent as his mother would have dreamed, making her loneliness and the hardships she had to endure lighter and filling all her sad moments with love and smiles. Their life was not perfect, and there were many days when Natalie would come home from work so tired that she could barely play with her son and enjoy his company, but in their own way, they were happy.
Unfortunately, the tranquility of this mother and her precious three-year-old son would soon be shattered by an unexpected event. Oliver’s mother worked every day cleaning at an old high school on the outskirts of London. The school was about a twenty-minute walk from her apartment, which allowed her to commute without having to use the car or public transport. Because it was also very close to Oliver’s daycare, it gave her time to take him there and pick him up at dismissal time.
Little Oliver loved being picked up by his mother and singing songs together on the way home. For his mother, those moments together were the most precious thing she had and made sense of all the bad times in the past. The walk home was her special moment. No matter how tired she was from work, Natalie always found the strength to smile at her little boy and sing with him all the songs they knew.
But one day something changed, and Natalie couldn’t find the strength to sing or run hand-in-hand with her son on the way home. Oliver was waiting for her at the door of the daycare, smiling and impatient to throw himself into his mother’s arms. However, it didn’t take the boy long to realize that something was wrong. He only had to look into his mother’s eyes to know it. The boy let go of the teacher’s hand and ran to meet his mother. Oliver held out his arms as he always did for his mother to take him, but his mother did not move and just smiled weakly at her son.
“Mommy won’t be able to play with you today, sweetie. I’m a little tired. Will you forgive me? Tomorrow I’m sure I’ll feel better and we can play,” Natalie assured her son.
Oliver looked at her frowning and nodded slightly, although inside he couldn’t help but feel that his mother was hiding something from him, and a fear unknown to him until then began to take hold of the little three-year-old.
That day they returned home in silence and walking at a slow pace. It was the first time Oliver didn’t come home singing, nor did he run to the door of his house impatient to rush to the fridge and devour the peanut butter sandwiches that Natalie always left ready for him for a snack. The boy had hoped that when he got home and got some rest, his mother would regain her strength and be more cheerful, but that didn’t happen either.
Opening the fridge, Oliver was surprised to see it almost empty and find no peanut butter sandwich prepared.
“I forgot to go grocery shopping, honey. Today you’ll have to settle for eating some fruit. Tomorrow I’ll go and buy your snack, I promise. Now mom needs to get some sleep, then we’ll play, okay?” his mother assured him in a weak voice.
The boy nodded and ate an apple in silence as he read one of the children’s stories on the table. His mother usually read them to him after a snack or before bedtime, but that day Natalie didn’t have the strength to play with her son and didn’t even get up at dinner time to prepare supper. Oliver peeked into her bedroom to check on her but didn’t dare wake her up. The woman looked really exhausted, and he let her sleep despite being hungry.
That night, Oliver went to bed without supper and with his stomach growling. He could hardly sleep, but the boy’s hunger was nothing compared to the concern he felt for his mother’s state of health.
Unfortunately, things did not improve the next day; quite the opposite. Oliver woke up early. He was hungry and ran to his mother’s room to wake her up and ask for breakfast. The room was completely dark, which alarmed the boy as his mother always kept the windows open and the house well-lit. That darkness was not a good sign. But that was not the only alarming thing. As he approached his mother, Oliver smelled a very strong odor that he could not identify. It was a very strong, rotten smell that made the little boy recoil in fear. He stood in front of his mother’s bed, deciding what to do.
“Mommy, are you awake?” he called out to her in a trembling voice.
There was no answer. Natalie was lying with her back to the door, so her son couldn’t see her face or know if she was awake or asleep.
“Mommy, mommy, I’m hungry! Mom, please wake up!” the boy shouted again, this time very scared.
The situation was beginning to overcome him, and the fear he felt from not getting an answer from his mother was taking over him. Natalie continued without moving. The room was still silent and in complete darkness. Finally, Oliver, in desperation, ran to the windows and pulled the blinds to let in the light and see his mother’s face.
But what the boy saw when he turned around and checked to see if his mother was still sleeping left him speechless. Turning around, Oliver saw his mother lying on the bed, but her position was strange. Her eyes were closed, but her mouth was slightly open, giving her a rather sinister look. And right next to her was a dark-colored puddle of vomit. The hue of the stain made the boy very frightened; it was bright red.
“Mom, what’s wrong with you? Wake up, Mommy! Can you hear me?” Oliver shouted, climbing onto the bed and shaking his mother’s body.
But Natalie didn’t seem to hear her son’s voice calling desperately. In fact, Natalie had been hours away from there in a state of semi-consciousness from which no one seemed able to wake her. Oliver continued to call his mother for several more minutes but soon realized that his mother was not going to wake up and that he needed to seek help urgently.
The boy started pacing around the room nervously, trying to remember what he had been told at daycare about what to do if he was alone and felt in danger. The teacher had mentioned an emergency telephone number where he could directly contact an ambulance and the police. But the boy was so nervous and frightened, looking at his mother who was lying unconscious on the bed, that he was unable to remember.
“There were three numbers, and I’m sure the first one was nine, but I’m missing two other numbers and I don’t remember them. Damn it! Mommy, please help me! Wake up and help me, mommy!” cried the disconsolate child, pulling on his mother’s hand.
The scene was heartbreaking. Oliver was crying and screaming next to his mother, who was still unconscious in a pose that gave her the appearance of a broken doll that had been abandoned. But as he looked at his mother’s face, Oliver remembered and ran to the living room. There he began to rummage through the top drawer of an old chest of drawers, on top of which was a telephone. It didn’t take him long to find what he was looking for: an old telephone book.
“Here it is! The emergency number is 911,” said the euphoric boy as he ran to dial the number on the phone.
On the other end of the line answered the voice of a young woman. Her name was Elisa.
“My name is Elisa, how can I help you?” said the voice calmly.
Oliver did not know what to say. He remained mute for a few moments and finally shouted, “My mother is sick! She won’t wake up! You have to help her, please, miss!” shouted the boy through the earpiece.
The emergency operator realized that the person talking was a little boy and hurried to ask him if there was anyone else with him at home.
“No, it’s just my mommy and I. We’re always alone. But today my mother didn’t wake up, and yesterday she wasn’t feeling well either. Please, I don’t know what’s wrong with her! Help her!” Oliver pleaded again, this time in tears.
“Easy, little boy. Tell me your name and where you live, and we can help your mother,” said the operator, very nervously.
Oliver told her his name and address in a hurried manner. His voice was shaking, and he kept crying, which made it very difficult to understand what he was saying. Luckily, operator Elisa was able to decipher what the boy said and quickly deduced the neighborhood where Oliver and his mother lived.
“Okay, Oliver. Now you have to be very brave, and you have to keep talking to me on the phone while we wait for help to arrive at your house. I need to know how you and your mother are doing at all times, understood?” Elisa asked him gently, trying to calm the little boy who kept sobbing through the phone.
“I’m not going anywhere, Miss. I would never leave my mother alone. She was very sad and tired. Do you know why she doesn’t wake up? She has been sleeping since yesterday. Do you also sleep so much when you are tired?” asked the child innocently.
Elisa was on the verge of tears and did not know how to answer that question without causing the child to suffer. It was obvious that his mother had suffered some kind of cardiac arrest in her sleep, or perhaps she had been poisoned in some way. They wouldn’t know until the doctors examined her, but they had to hurry if they were to have any chance of saving her life.
“Your mom will be fine, Oliver. I’m sure she will. The ambulance won’t take more than ten minutes to arrive. You keep talking to me. It is very important that we do not lose communication,” Elisa told him, being very conscious that she was promising the child something that neither she nor anyone else could assure without first seeing the state of his mother’s health.
But things were about to get complicated for Oliver and the emergency services. The ambulances were on their way to Natalie and her son’s house, going as fast as London traffic would allow. But Oliver’s house was a long way from the city center, and it had started to rain heavily, making it even more difficult to get around.
“They’re five minutes away from you, honey. Hold on a little longer. Is your mother still sleeping?” Elisa asked the boy, very anxious because Oliver had been silent for more than two minutes. “Oliver, can you hear me?” repeated Elisa, this time shouting.
There was a minute of silence, after which the boy’s voice was heard again, but almost inaudible. Oliver spoke in whispers and was breathing heavily.
“Miss… it hurts. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I’m sleepy,” Oliver managed to say.
Elisa felt her heart stop when she heard the boy in that state. She rushed to ask him what was wrong and begged him to continue talking to her and not to go to sleep.
“Oliver, listen, listen to me! Keep talking to me, please! What is wrong with you? What symptoms do you have?” she asked him, on the verge of hysteria.
“I’m very sleepy and my stomach hurts. I think I’m going to vomit. I don’t know… everything is spinning,” said the boy between whispers.
It was evident that he was having more and more trouble breathing and that he was going to lose consciousness at any moment. Listening to the boy’s symptoms and analyzing the state his mother had been in for several hours, Elisa quickly came to a conclusion. Oliver and his mother were suffering from the effects of some kind of poisoning or intoxication. But how could they have been poisoned? Finding out what the source of the poison was would be the key to saving the mother and child’s life, but the ambulance had not yet arrived at the house, and the child was on the verge of fainting.
Oliver continued to babble words for a few more minutes, but they were running out of time. With every minute that passed without medical assistance, their chances of survival diminished drastically. Elisa heard a muffled thud as the phone fell to the floor, and then there was silence. Oliver had just passed out and lay asleep on the floor next to his mother, who had been in the same state for hours.
“Oliver, can you hear me? Oliver!” shouted the operator through the phone, but it was no use. The boy was sound asleep on the floor carpet and couldn’t hear anything she or anyone else said to him.
“This complicates things a lot. Oh my God,” the operator cursed to herself as she hurried to contact the ambulance that was about to arrive at the door of Natalie Harper’s apartment. “Break down the door to get into the apartment! The child has just fainted. There is no time! Break down the door! There is no other way to enter the apartment!” Elisa shouted to the ambulance operators who were already climbing the stairs of the building.
The health operators did not have the necessary instruments to break down the apartment door, so they had to wait ten more minutes for the police to arrive. The minutes continued to pass, and while the police officers knocked on the door to enter, Oliver and his mother were still unconscious, waiting for a miracle that could save them from this nightmare.
One blow, two blows, three blows… Bang! The front door fell, shaking the building’s foundation, and paramedics and police swarmed into the apartment in search of the boy and his mother. The medical services were divided, and while two doctors attended to Natalie, two others took care of the child.
The one who was worse off was Natalie, who had been asleep for more than eight hours according to Oliver’s own testimony when he spoke to the emergency services by phone. So they rushed to put her on a stretcher and began to give her first aid. Oliver had only been unconscious for a few minutes, but the first thing the doctors noticed when they examined him was the strange bluish color of his lips and a small puddle of vomit next to his face.
The mother had also vomited and was lying asleep next to a larger and alarmingly reddish puddle. The boy’s was not that color and was quite small, but in both cases, it was a clear symptom of poisoning or intoxication. Oliver’s pulse was weak, as was his mother’s, but he responded quickly to treatment, and as soon as he arrived at the hospital, he began to wake up. Natalie, on the other hand, was admitted to intensive care while all kinds of tests were carried out to find out what had poisoned them.
However, the evidence that would unveil the whole mystery was not in the body of either of them, but in their home—more specifically, in the plumbing. The police teams analyzed every corner of the house in search of the source of the poison but found nothing in the food or in the products they used every day. They were surprised to find that in the same building, two other neighbors had gone to the doctor that same week with symptoms similar to those of Natalie and her son.
This fact changed the course of the investigation, and they found a common point among all the neighbors in the building: water. Upon entering the kitchen of Natalie’s house, the police officers detected a strange odor, very similar to the one in the mother’s room when the emergency services went in to help her. It was the smell of lead, which in small doses is practically imperceptible, but once it accumulates, it has a very subtle sweet smell that is easy to confuse with other aromas.
As soon as they investigated a little more, they found that the plumbing was in very bad condition and that there was a small leak in the building system through which the compound had been leaking to all the neighbors. Although those who lived on the first floors and closer to the ground were more exposed and therefore were the ones who presented symptoms. Natalie and Oliver lived on the first floor, being the closest to the lead leak, which caused them to get sick quickly, with the child’s mother being the most affected of all.
As soon as they found out what the cause of the poisoning was, the doctors proceeded to give them a treatment that would counteract all its effects. Oliver woke up quickly and recovered within a couple of days from the lead exposure. His mother needed a week of intensive treatment because the level of lead in her blood was very high and had affected several vital organs. Although her life was not in any danger, she only needed rest and medication, after which she could return to her normal life.
After leaving the hospital and after much meditation, Natalie agreed to sue the owners of the building with the help of other neighbors for the unsanitary conditions in which they rented their homes, to the point of being a danger to the lives of their tenants. The lawsuit was successful, and with the money they won in compensation, mother and son were able to buy a small house in a nice neighborhood in London, thus starting a new life full of light and hope for both of them.
