Four children spent the better part of seven years crammed inside the cab of a tractor-trailer rolling between Miami and Atlanta, denied schooling, medical care, adequate food, and even basic time to shower or use a restroom, according to arrest records filed by the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office. The two adults responsible, Keisha Epps, 51, and her fiancé Tamra Marshon Stewart, 37, now sit in Duval County Jail facing child neglect charges, with capital sexual battery counts looming against Stewart.
The arrests came August 6, 2026. The allegations stretch back to December 2019, when court documents say the children began living inside the vehicle “for the majority of their days.” That means the confinement lasted roughly six and a half to seven years before law enforcement intervened.
What investigators found, as Fox News reported, reads less like a neglect case and more like a catalog of sustained cruelty inflicted on children who had no one else to turn to.
Epps drove trucks for a living. Stewart watched the children while Epps was sleeping, showering, or behind the wheel. The four kids shared a single bunk so small they had to lie “curled up side by side because they could not fit,” the arrest report stated.
Investigators noted the children were “walking with an unnatural gait from being confined to the cab.” They were “fed poorly.” They received no medical or dental care. During interviews at a child advocacy center, the children said they “have not been allowed to attend school for approximately five years.”
One child suffered a severe burn from cooked noodles. Neither adult sought medical treatment. The child told interviewers, “There was a lot of blood.” The burn left a permanent scar.
Another child was found with an untreated sexually transmitted infection, a discovery that pointed investigators toward far graver allegations.
The arrest report states that when children confronted Stewart about sexual abuse they had witnessed, Stewart allegedly “beat them by punching them in their heads.” When the children told Epps what had happened, she allegedly “called one derogatory names and continued to leave them alone with” Stewart.
Court documents indicate that capital sexual battery charges against Stewart will be filed in the 9th Judicial District by the Statewide Prosecutor. Under Florida law, anyone convicted of sexual battery of a child younger than 12 years old can face the death penalty or life in prison without parole.
The case is a grim reminder that predators who target children often operate behind closed doors, or, in this case, behind the walls of a moving truck cab. Across the country, law enforcement continues to uncover cases of adults exploiting children in ways designed to avoid detection.
Both Epps and Stewart face four counts of child neglect, one for each child, classified as third-degree felonies. Each count carries up to five years in prison, up to five years of probation, and a fine of up to $5,000.
Epps’s bond was set at $400,012. Stewart is being held without bond.
Investigators described the conduct as a “committed, willful failure or omission to provide a child with the care, supervision, and services necessary to maintain the child’s physical and mental health, including but not limited to, food, nutrition, clothing, shelter, supervision, medicine and medical services that a prudent person would consider essential to the wellbeing of the child.” The New York Post corroborated these details from the arrest records.
Neither Epps nor Stewart has made any public statement in response to the charges. No plea has been reported.
The arrest report was heavily redacted. The children’s ages, sexes, and relationships to Epps and Stewart, whether biological children, stepchildren, or something else, are all sealed. The identity of the specific child found with an untreated sexually transmitted infection has not been disclosed publicly, nor has the child advocacy center where the interviews took place been named.
It remains unclear exactly when and how the children were removed from the tractor-trailer cab, and by whom. The timeline between the start of the investigation and the August 6 arrests has not been detailed in available records.
Cases of prolonged child abuse raise hard questions about how long the suffering persisted before anyone noticed. The children in this case allegedly went years without attending school. That alone should have triggered some institutional alarm, a truancy inquiry, a welfare check, a flag in some system somewhere. The fact that it apparently did not is worth examining. Crimes against children are not confined to any single setting or scheme; recent federal cases have exposed elaborate predatory operations targeting scores of minors that went undetected for years.
Four children vanished from any classroom for five years. They lived inside a truck cab on a commercial freight route. They had no doctor, no dentist, no teacher, and, by the account in the arrest report, no meaningful contact with the outside world.
How does that happen in a country with compulsory education laws, child protective services, and mandatory reporting requirements? The question is not rhetorical. It demands an answer from every agency and institution that might have crossed paths with these children or their caregivers between December 2019 and August 2026.
The criminal justice system has now caught up to Epps and Stewart. If the capital sexual battery charges are filed as indicated, Stewart could face the most severe penalties Florida law allows. But accountability after the fact is not the same as protection before the damage is done. Other recent cases have shown how adults entrusted with access to children can exploit that trust while systems meant to safeguard minors fail to intervene in time.
The children in this case lived in a space barely large enough for one adult, denied every basic necessity a child needs to grow into a functioning human being. One carries a permanent scar. At least one contracted a disease no child should have. All of them walked with gaits warped by years of physical confinement.
Those facts speak for themselves. The law now has its chance to act. The real failure is that it took this long.
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