Trial Moving Forward for Father Who Kept Daughter in Shed

The trial for the father of a Lakeside girl found living in unsanitary conditions in Lakeside will go forward, officials confirmed.

Joe Tavolazzi, was arraigned on four felony charges including child endangerment last month after deputies conducting a probation compliance found the nine-year-old girl living in a backyard tool shed waist high with trash and infested with rats and cockroaches.

Multiple gang members were living in the main house, and there was no running water in the shed. Guns, meth and paraphernalia for dealing drugs were also found in the shed.

Deputies testified that all the drugs and weapons were easily accessible to anyone in the shed.

The girl told Sheriff’s deputies she had been living in the shed for three weeks. She referred to the shed as "the room" and described it as small with no bathroom, with a pile of trash that smelled awful and had rats and roaches all over it, and with a refrigerator that had nothing to eat in it.

She said she used the bathroom in the house but it also stank, and she sometimes used the public park bathroom across the street as well.

Deputies said the nine-year-old appeared well nourished, content and articulate.

She said her father cut up white rocks and gave them to people at all hours of the day and night as well as "green stuff” she called weed.

The girl's uncle said her father had no other place to stay and the shed was the only place he could keep her. 

The trial is scheduled for June 27.