11 children found in "filthy" New Mexico compound with little food, authorities say

Law enforcement officers searching a rural northern New Mexico compound for a missing 3-year-old boy didn't locate him but found 11 other children in filthy conditions and hardly any food, a sheriff said Saturday. The children ranging in age from 1 to 15 were removed from the compound in the small community of Amalia, New Mexico, and turned over to state child-welfare workers, Taos County Sheriff Jerry Hogrefe said. Two men were arrested during the search while two women at the compound were initially detained before being released pending further investigation, Hogrefe said. Hogrefe said he got word in May about 39-year-old Siraj Wahhaj, who was wanted for the abduction of a 3-year-old boy in Clayton County, Georgia, CBS Albuquerque affiliate KRQE reports. After an extensive investigation, on Friday morning deputies and other agencies raided what the sheriff called a compound made of garbage and tires. Amalia is 145 miles northeast of Albuquerque and in an isolated high-desert area near the New Mexico-Colorado border. Hogrefe said authorities had conducted surveillance of the compound while looking for the missing boy before he decided Thursday to get a search warrant immediately after a Georgia investigator forwarded a message in which someone at the compound reportedly told another person that people at the compound were starving and needed water...MORE