Neglected Texas child, 3, tells police: 'I need a beer'

When police in Lubbock, Texas, were called to investigate a report of a three-year-old girl wandering alone in an apartment complex, they weren't sure what they might find.

The girl was "extremely dirty", with red bumps from bedbug bites covering her skin. A neighbour who sometimes babysits the girl said the filth was a result of the girl playing outside.

If officers had any doubts that the child needed help, those were erased a short time later, when the girl repeatedly told them "I'm hungry" and dropped a shocking one-liner: "I need a beer."

"This was a clear neglect on the mother's part," Lubbock Police Lt Ray Mendoza told the station. "More than anything, it was the conditions the child was living under and the fact that the mom was completely oblivious to where the child had been or where [she] was at the time."