<p>A Martinsville man will serve about a year of probation after his toddler children were left home alone in a trailer without food and electricity in the Center Grove area.</p>
<p>Richard Scott Hill pleaded guilty to one charge of neglect of a dependent, a Level 6 felony. Three other charges of neglect of a dependent were dropped as part of the plea agreement, according to court documents.</p>
<p>Circuit Court Judge Andrew Roesener accepted the plea agreement earlier this month that specifies that Hill’s sentence is 18 days in jail and 346 days in probation for the June incident. He was given nine days of jail credit, court documents said.</p>
<p>Hill must also take parenting classes as part of the agreement, according to court documents.</p>
<p>A warrant was issued for Hill’s arrest in June after a teenage daughter told a friend’s mother that she had not seen her parents in more than a week, prompting an investigation by the Johnson County Sheriff’s Office.</p>
<p>The teen told police she had not seen her parents and did not know where her three younger siblings, ages 3 to 8, were or if they were being fed. The parents of the girl did not respond to multiple calls from police, a police report said.</p>
<p>Police went to the family’s last known address on County Line Road in Greenwood, according to the report.</p>
<p>An officer arrived at the home on June 3 and found two young children, ages 5 and 3, home alone, court documents said.</p>
<p>The electricity to the home in the Center Grove Estates neighborhood had been off for a month, according to a police report.</p>
<p>The children walked outside when the deputy arrived, and told him that they had been staying home alone.</p>
<p>The children told police they had not had anything to eat and when the deputy offered to make them a sandwich, they said the meat in the home was rotten and that there was not anything to eat in the home, according to the police said. The 5-year-old told him the inside of the refrigerator was nasty, and warned him not to look in it, the report said.</p>
<p>The home was dirty and unsanitary and did not have electricity. The children told police they had stayed the night with a neighbor and had eaten at the neighbor’s house the day before, court documents said.</p>
<p>Piles of dirty clothes were all over the home, bologna was left out and was rotting, a mattress in the kitchen was dirty and stained, gnats and flies were flying around the home and the refrigerator smelled like rotten food, according to court documents.</p>
<p>A teenage neighbor told police she had watched the children the day before and the children were walking between the two homes because the children were homesick.</p>
<p>The Department of Child Services took custody of the children.</p>
<p>Kila Hill, the mother in the case, faces a jury trial next month for the same charges.</p>
