Two Northern California residents who were already charged with felony child abuse, torture and mayhem faced possible additional charges after the bodies of two young children were found inside a Redding storage unit, police said.
The bodies were discovered while authorities investigated the abuse of a third child, Redding police Lt. Pete Brindley said Tuesday.
On Friday night, the Plumas County Sheriff’s Department received a call that there was a possible case of child abuse or neglect in Quincy, Brindley said. The small town of Quincy is in the Sierra Nevada about 90 miles southeast of Redding.
When deputies arrived, they found a child who was badly injured. Tami Joy Huntsman, 39, and 17-year-old Gonzalo Curiel were arrested.
Plumas County investigators later informed Redding police that there could be two children in a storage space in their jurisdiction.
Authorities responded, found the storage unit and, because lives were at stake, busted the lock on the door, Brindley said.
He declined to give details about the scene investigators found when they opened the unit.
The children found inside were ages 5 and 3, Sacramento-area television station KCRA reported. The victims’ identities have not been released, but they were siblings, authorities said.
The relationship of the children to Huntsman and Curiel is unknown, Brindley said.
An autopsy is pending to determine a cause of death, and the case was being investigated as a homicide.
The third child is undergoing surgery at a hospital in Sacramento, Brindley said.
The pair who were arrested were Quincy residents who had recently been living in Salinas, a news release from the Redding Police Department stated. They were being held at Plumas County Jail, Brindley said.
A hazardous materials team conducted a search of an apartment in Salinas in connection with the case on Monday.
KTLA’s Tracy Bloom and Melissa Pamer contributed to this article.