22.02.2025 14:00
Images of a young girl, dressed only in pajamas and barefoot, begging to be let inside a home in freezing cold weather in the U.S. have sparked outrage on social media. The child was crying out that she was cold and wanted to come in. A neighbor who witnessed the incident noticed the situation and called 911.
A heart-wrenching video showed a small girl, dressed only in pajamas and barefoot, begging to be let inside outside her foster family's home in Oklahoma in record-breaking freezing temperatures.
Rhet Wike, who lives in the same Haskell neighborhood, went outside to investigate the screams of a small child he heard from his home on Tuesday afternoon.
Seeing the distressed little girl, who was wearing nothing but pink pajamas, without a coat or shoes, and crying out that she was cold and wanted to come inside, he called 911.
"It was very scary," Wike told Fox 23 News. "That little girl needs to be taken out of there. I don't believe she is safe at all."
This shocking incident unfolded around 4:00 PM on Tuesday when Wike heard the child's cries coming from just outside his home.
According to Fox 23, Wike and his wife had heard similar "screaming" sounds from the same house a few weeks earlier, but this time it was different.
Haskell was experiencing record-breaking freezing temperatures on Tuesday, with the air at 12 degrees (-11°C) - below zero when accounting for wind chill and snow.
"I immediately said, 'Okay, I'm not going to waste any time,'" Wike recounted to Fox 23. "I ran outside, grabbed my phone, took a short video for evidence because I know how it goes, and then I called the police - they came very quickly."
"She was standing on a wheelchair ramp, an aluminum ramp, and she was freezing," he added. "She had no socks or shoes. She was just wearing pajamas and crying out 'I'm cold.'
The video, which sparked outrage on social media, showed the barefoot child shifting from one foot to the other in a desperate attempt to escape the freezing temperatures.
The clearly distraught girl could be heard repeatedly saying, "I'm cold. I'm cold."
Wike's anger grew when the girl's foster father opened the door and, while Wike was on the phone with authorities, horrifically rejected the girl's heartbreaking pleas to come inside to warm up.
"The foster father came out to the back porch, and the baby was trying to get past him," Wike told Fox 23.
"He was telling her, 'No, no, you need to stop whining,' and he pushed her back and went inside to the warm house!"
While it is unclear how long the child was outside, Wike told Fox 56 News that she suffered for at least 10 minutes before the police arrived.
"I think it was 10 or 11 minutes," he said to Fox 23. "She was clearly distressed. She hadn't just been taken outside. Her feet were red. She was going crazy."
Both police officers and a caseworker from DHS (Department of Human Services) arrived at the scene and left an hour later. The DHS worker decided to leave the girl at home with the couple, who were said to be facing charges by the police.