Trigger Warning: This article contains references to the alleged child abuse that some readers may find distressing.
In February 2025, a single vehicle serving as a shelter for a family of eight broke down in the parking lot of a Walmart in Princeton, Texas. A concerned homeowner took in a family of eight after seeing a Facebook post about them living in a broken-down car.
The local couple offered their home’s second floor to the struggling family as their son was away in college and they had spare rooms. What began as an act of charity quickly unveiled signs of child neglect.
The woman noticed that the six children, who were between the ages of two and ten, had no shoes and were dressed in ill-fitted clothes. She found out that none of the children was enrolled in school or receiving formal education. Additionally, she learned that Kevin Dixon, the father of the kids, restrained them from coming downstairs.
Police bodycam footage posted by Daily Dose of Crime on YouTube shows the woman calling Child Protective Services to the residence after the parents of the six children leave the house. As a CPS worker and one police officer approach the front door, the owner answers. She explains the situation and leads the inspectors upstairs to where the family had been staying.
Authorities found that the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services had already flagged inadequate living conditions for the children and warned Dixon against excessive discipline four years ago in 2021. However, the warning never led to any serious charges.
Describing the state of the family’s car, the witness said, “Forget about the vehicle situation because it needs either an alternator or more, but he took it up to check the Walmart. It’s by the apartments’ side of the Walmart, but it has no tags. It’s not inspected. And when you walk up to it, it’s disgusting. I don’t have pictures of it, but you will smell it. It smells like severe urine.”
The officer spoke to the oldest child and found that they have not been to school in over a year.
The case quickly shifts from deprivation into that of parental control after DFPS finds that five out of the six children have marks and permanent scars on their bodies. The witness told officers that he had a criminal background.
“He has a robbery. He held someone at gunpoint in 2017. I guess he had a handgun recently, and he was in Gainesville, not recently in jail, for I don’t know. He said (he was) driving without a license. Well, he was driving this morning without a license.”
“The mom works in Arlington, and she was driving back and forth as home care. Mom seems like she is fine with the kids. She does what she needs to with them. It’s dad that’s holding her back from taking care of them correctly. And he kind of manipulates her.”
When authorities confronted the parents after they returned, they made excuses. The mother said that the children were not in school because they have no stable place to stay.
“But, when I tried to enroll them into school, the registrar at a school…told me not to enroll these kids into a school until we have somewhere stable because I was trying to just enroll them into a school that’s closer to my cousin’s house so she could just like get them until I got off of work. But the registrar flat out told us, if we didn’t have a place to stay, don’t enroll the kids in school. This was in Dallas ISD.”
She explains that they lived in a different car previously.
“So, it’s in a parking lot. It’s just under a train track. But we were parked there. Um, people had stopped, you know, to see if we were okay, if anything, you know, the kids were warm and everything. The car just wasn’t starting back up when it was time to get the hell out there.”
“So, that’s when we asked someone for a boost. The guy came over, you know, and gave us a boost. The car still was dying, and then he came back the following day to help us. And that following day, which is a Friday, he made the post. I’m not sure whenever he made the post, but he made the post, and then someone came out, …we took the help. And we’ve been here for about a week, you know; we’ve just been waiting on things to come into play for us to basically get up and move because we’ve been here without transportation up until a couple days ago.”
However, she doesn’t mention how they came to live in a car. Authorities find no record of employment, income, or the reason behind their current situation. The CPS intervened and took custody of all the children. The parents were taken into police custody.
The older children finally spoke and said that they were starved and beaten and were not allowed to interact without the parents’ consent.
It’s unclear what happened to the mother. Dixon, on the other hand, received five life sentences for child abuse and two 25-year sentences for child malnutrition after pleading guilty to seven total counts of injury to a child causing serious bodily injury.
Detective Carolyn Crawford of the Princeton Police Department documented severe injuries across the six children, including the youngest. Due to Dixon’s prior robbery record, Collin County Judge Kimberly M. Lassiter sentenced him under an enhanced penalty range of 15 years to life per count.
Although Dixon has filed seven active appeals, his convictions and multiple life sentences currently stand.
Disclaimer: The Inquisitr could not independently confirm the facts of this incident and is reporting based on the information available within the public video record.
