Detroit police arrested a 37-year-old mother of five Wednesday after she left her three toddlers alone in a feces-filled house with a loaded gun as she drove her fiancé to the emergency room when one of her teenage sons shot him.

When police arrived at the house in the 15000 Block of Ardmore, they found three small girls, ages 1, 4 and 5, alone in what Detroit Police Department Sgt. Michael Woody described as “horrible” conditions inside the home.

“As a parent, it’s just hard to fathom that somebody would actually leave their kids in a home after a shooting had occurred,” another Deroit policeman, Marcellus Ball, who carried the children out of the home, told Detroit’s Channel 7 News. “I’m just lost for words. I just don’t understand it.

According to police, the children were hungry and there was no food in the house. The house was filthy and disgusting, police said, with mounds of feces in lying in the open, according to CBS Detroit TV. In addition to lacking food, the children had no beds.

The rifle that had only moments earlier been used by one of their brothers to shoot her mother’s fiancé in the hand was left out in the open as well.

When police entered the home, they asked the 5-year-old child if there was an adult present.

“The 5-year-old said ‘No’ and told the whole story,” Wood told The Detroit News.

The story she told was that the woman’s two sons, ages 16 and 19, got into a heated argument with their mother’s boyfriend about who was more important to their family. The mother took her boyfriend’s side.

“She was saying, ‘Go to your room. This is his house,'” Woody recounted.

The boys obeyed and went to their room. Moments later the 16-year-old emerged carrying a rifle. He then shot his mother’s 37-year-old boyfriend in the right ring finger. The older man was later listed in stable condition.

The mother then left to get her boyfriend to a Detroit hospital while the two teenagers fled on foot. Police are still searching for the two boys. They arrested the mother when she returned home.

Police received a 911 call that alerted them to the sordid situation, but they are not certain who placed it.

Officers turned the three young children over to Child Protective Services, who then placed them in the care of their grandparents.

A temporary custody hearing for the children was scheduled to take place in Detroit today.