Four Children Lived in the Cab of a Truck for Seven Years. No One Outside That Cab Knew.

For nearly seven years, according to Florida investigators, four children lived in the cab of a tractor-trailer that ran routes between Miami and Atlanta — sharing a single bunk, denied food, showers, schooling, and medical care, on a truck that passed through dozens of towns without anyone outside it ever knowing.

Two women have now been arrested and charged.

Keisha Epps, 51, and Tamra Stewart, 37, face multiple charges. Epps alone is charged with two counts of sexual battery, two counts of lewd or lascivious molestation of a child under 12, two counts of child neglect without great bodily harm, two counts of child neglect causing permanent disfigurement, and four counts of failing to report child abuse. Both women face additional neglect charges.

The four children — two boys and two girls — were between five and nine years old when the abuse is alleged to have started. Investigators say they were confined to the truck's cab for years at a stretch, on a route that regularly passed through Florida. Two of the children were found with untreated burns that left permanent scarring.

Officials describe the investigation as ongoing, with more charges considered possible as it continues.

A tractor-trailer is, by design, a vehicle that exists everywhere and belongs nowhere — it crosses through jurisdictions faster than any single one can track it, and a cab is a private space in a way a house or apartment isn't subject to the same visibility from neighbors, landlords, or mail carriers. That's speculation about the mechanism, not an excuse anyone involved has offered; investigators haven't said publicly how the situation went undetected for as long as it did.

What's confirmed is this: four children spent years of their childhood inside a truck cab moving between two states, and the case that eventually surfaced it is still being built.