‘Dangerous squalor.’ California parents charged in death of asthmatic girl who lived in roach-filled home

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The parents of an 8-year-old girl who died after an extended asthma attack in her family’s squalid San Jose home have been charged with felony child neglect, Santa Clara County prosecutors announced this week.

The girl’s mother, Gabrielle Hanson, 32, and stepfather, Jacob Randolph, 39, were arraigned Tuesday in Santa Clara County Superior Court. Neither entered a plea.

On May 13, the girl, identified by authorities as Aurora, had an asthma attack and “fell into serious medical distress,” but her parents waited eight hours before seeking medical help, according to the Santa Clara County District Attorney’s Office.

Aurora was taken by ambulance to a hospital, where she died four days later.

Last month, the county Office of the Medical Examiner-Coroner classified Aurora’s death as a homicide. The cause was determined to be a lack of oxygen to the brain due to severe asthma with acute lung injury while fighting cold-like symptoms. The county’s chief medical examiner, Michelle Jorden, determined that medical neglect was “a significant factor in her death,” the district attorney’s office said in a statement.

Prosecutors said Aurora was one of seven children, ages 2 months to 17-years-old, who lived in an East San Jose house on Lancelot Lane that was filled with cockroaches, pet feces, garbage and mold. The children were taken into protective custody by county social workers after Aurora was hospitalized.

Prosecutors said the Santa Clara County Dept. of Family and Children’s Services was well aware that children had been living in unsanitary conditions in the home since at least 2019. Prior reports by county social workers and San Jose police “documented significant cockroach infestations,” according to the district attorney’s office.

In February 2025, a relative brought Aurora to an emergency room for asthma, wheezing and difficulty breathing. At the hospital, an insect fell from the girl’s shoe, and a staffer saw a cockroach crawling on her, the district attorney’s office said.

Aurora told staff: “Oh yeah, bugs just crawl on me.”

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The district attorney’s office said the child was reported to smell like cat urine and appeared seriously underweight and pale. She told hospital staff she was hungry and had not eaten.

“Why does this keep happening?” Santa Clara County Dist. Atty. Jeff Rosen asked at a news conference Tuesday, where he demanded accountability from the county’s child welfare agency, which has been under intense scrutiny after the deaths of multiple children in recent years who were under county supervision or whose families had contact with the agency.

In a statement, Rosen said that “prosecuting people after this kind of tragedy is necessary — and not enough.”

“Another child is needlessly dead in this county, and once again our prosecutors will do everything in our legal power to hold the people who did this responsible,” he wrote, adding that there “are serious questions about how this child and her siblings lived in this dangerous squalor for so long. In the name of this lost child and the others, this community deserves honest answers and real changes.”

The Santa Clara County Dept. of Family and Children’s Services did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

During the investigation of Aurora’s death, detectives did not find her prescribed inhaler in the home. They found “a dirty, poorly maintained inhaler spacer that was missing the rubber seal designed to prevent medication from leaking” as well as a respiratory mask with cockroaches in it, according to the district attorney’s office.

Prosecutors said Hanson and Randolph had been warned multiple times by medical and social service workers that the conditions inside their home were dangerous for the children.

The investigation into Aurora’s death also led the district attorney’s office to charge her uncle, Jonathan Hanson, 44, with sexual abuse involving another child in the house.

Hanson, the brother of Gabrielle Hanson, was charged with two counts of molestation and one count possessing explicit phone videos of the child, who was between the ages of 11 and 15 at the time of the alleged abuse.

Jonathan Hanson, who lived at the home, also was arraigned on Tuesday and did not enter a plea, Sean Webby, a spokesman for the district attorney’s office, said in an email. Gabrielle Hanson was charged with “knowing about the molestation and doing nothing to stop it,” prosecutors said.

Over objections by prosecutors, Aurora’s mother and stepfather were released from custody Tuesday under the court’s “supervised own recognizance,” meaning they did not have to post bail and will remain out of jail until their next court appearance.

Webby said they have a no-contact order with their children and are not allowed to supervise any minors “in any capacity, paid or unpaid.”

Jonathan Hanson remains in custody without bail.

All three defendants are scheduled to appear at the Hall of Justice in San Jose on Nov. 20 for a plea hearing.

In an interview this month with The Mercury News, Gabrielle Hanson called Aurora “an angel on this earth” and said that she and her husband tried to help the girl during her asthma attack.

“I loved her so much, and the thought that I might go to jail now for something that I had no control over — she wouldn’t want that, you know?” Hanson told the newspaper. “It seems like they’re looking for somebody to blame, but I did everything I could. We all did.”

Hailey Branson-Potts is a general assignment reporter who joined the Los Angeles Times in 2011. She reports on a wide range of issues and people, with a special focus on rural communities. She grew up in the small town of Perry, Okla., and graduated from the University of Oklahoma.

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