Though neighbors and family members were aware that a young mother often neglected her two boys, the authorities were not alerted until the woman had left the children unattended in a heated car and both perished, as reported by the Denver Post.
H.J.'s two boys, 2 year-old W.J. and 4 year-old T.J., died of hyperthermia after a November 27 incident where she left them locked in her car to join a man in his truck, and the two adults engaged in sex and smoked marijuana.
H.J. was known for leaving her boys unattended before. Neighbors now report that they aided the boys by breaking into H.J.'s apartment – after hearing the two children pounding on the walls.
Going through several roommates while living in the dilapidated apartment complex, friends and relatives said she would leave her children with whoever was around and willing.
One neighbor alerted the Mesa County Department of Social Services in January 2011 that H.J. smoked marijuana in full view of her children.
Tracey Garchar, the Mesa County Department of Social Services director, said, "Very rarely do bad things happen to children without people around them suspecting something going on. If people would just care and call, we as a state and nation could have a huge impact on child abuse."
By mid-January H.J. was apprehended in Florida in her mother's trailer home. She was arrested on suspicion of child abuse resulting in death, criminally negligent homicide and false reporting to authorities.
H.J. has since been extradited to Grand Junction and was not available for comment.
E.J., the two young boy's father, had died in a car accident last October, just a month before his children.
The boy's aunt, H.R., commented, "She deserves everything she has coming to her. Those boys were neglected. She couldn't take care of them."
Many of the people that had witnessed H.J. neglect her children are both upset with themselves for their failure to report it, and angry with H.J. A Facebook page, named after H.J. followed by the word "Childkiller" has received several of comments.
H.R., a mother of three young children herself, added, "I am at fault. We are all at fault. Those boys would be alive today if we had done something…I was too busy dealing with my own issues."
The director of Mesa County Criminal Justice Services, D.B., said that H.J., having been charged with domestic violence earlier in 2012, and on a deferred judgment, had been on low-level monitoring.
During H.J.'s court-ordered drug testing she tested positive for marijuana four times and opiates once. In the weeks before the boys died she failed to meet with her supervisor three times for her scheduled check in appointments.
D.B. said that his department was in the process of bringing H.J. back to court just as her children died.
W.J. and T.J. were locked in H.J.'s Toyota 4-Runner, strapped into car seats with the heater left on, for approximately 65 minutes according to investigators. The vehicle was off to the side of a rural road on the Grand Mesa, where H.J. had scheduled a rendezvous with a man.
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