When investigators with the county’s Narcotics Enforcement Unit raided the Lycoming Township mobile home of Jeffrey Howlett and Lindy Beck at 1970 Beech St., A29, last week, they discovered living conditions that were simply “deplorable and dangerous,” according to Old Lycoming Township Police Sgt. Christopher Kriner. The couple lives in the home with their five minor children, he said.

One of the children’s bedrooms “was littered with toys and garbage on the floor, making it impossible to move through the room,” Kriner said in an affidavit. “There was a soiled mattress on the floor, directly next to an exposed electrical outlet with no protective faceplate,” Kriner said, adding that next to the mattress was “a baseboard heating unit with exposed live wiring.”

In a game room, where two of the children slept, investigators found “suspected methamphetamine on a glass plate” as well as suspected fentanyl “inside an unsecured wooden box on a computer desk where video game controls were located,” Kriner said.

Throughout the living area, there was garbage and animal feces on the floor, Kriner said, adding that in the kitchen were bags “containing rotten garbage and dirty diapers on the floor.”

In the court document, Kriner said there were “piles of dirty laundry throughout the entire trailer.” There was an exposed electrical outlet in the bathroom as well as an exposed electrical breaker box in the master bedroom, creating “a serious risk of electrocution as well as a fire risk,” Kriner added.

The county’s Children and Youth Department took emergency protective custody of the children following the raid on April 14. Just last month, the department had ordered the couple to clean up the trailer, Kriner said.

“Howlett and Beck allowed dangerous and unsanitary conditions to exist in their home which endangered their five children, even after repeated directives by authorities to clean the place up,” he added.

Howlett, 34, and Beck, 30, were arraigned Thursday before District Judge William Solomon on five felony counts each of endangering the welfare of children. Howlett was committed to the Lycoming County Prison in lieu of $75,000 bail while Beck was released on the same amount.

The search warrant that the narcotics unit filed to raid the home has been sealed and is not available to the public.