Hartford — Tabitha Frank had been living in "the margins," supporting five children alone in federally subsidized housing for years before her 2-year-old suffered grave injuries and later died after falling from a third-floor window in their Capitol Avenue apartment last month, local clergy said.

The state Department of Children and Families said there had been 18 prior reports involving the family. The only claim that was substantiated as meeting the "statutory criteria of physical neglect" occurred in 2016 — years before 2-year-old Corneliuz Williams was born.

Williams died July 24, two days after Hartford police said he fell from his family's apartment window while he and his four siblings were left home alone.

DCF had last met with the family in mid-June and was preparing to close a case that was opened in April, DCF Commissioner Vannessa Dorantes said in a statement released Friday.

Imagineers LLC, the company that oversees the Section 8 federally subsidized apartment where Frank and the children lived on Capitol Avenue, required the building's owners in May to fix a list of violations that included clogged plumbing, deteriorating paint, mold on the ceiling and walls and missing carbon monoxide detectors that were required to be replaced in 24 hours, according to an inspection report obtained by the city of Hartford and shared with Hearst Connecticut Media Group.

The inspection report indicates that repairs were made by May 30 when a second inspection of the apartment occurred. The city does not routinely inspect apartments unless a complaint has been filed, a spokesperson for Hartford Mayor Luke Bronin said Friday. Frank and her landlord had not filed any complaints with the city about the building since she moved into the apartment in 2021, the spokesperson said.

It is unclear how often Imagineers LLC is required to conduct inspections as a service provider for the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development, which administers the Section 8 subsidized housing program. A call to Imagineers LLC was not returned Friday. The owners of the building doing business as 1079-93 Capitol Ave LLC also did not return a call or an email Friday.

In their reports, police described Frank's apartment as "abysmal" when they responded after Williams fell from the window. Police said there were cockroaches, piles of dirty laundry that smelled of feces, stacks of unwashed dishes and dirt on the floor that stuck to the children's clothes.

After Williams' fall, a DCF social worker arrived at the scene and told police when they last checked on the family in mid-June, the apartment appeared "not that abysmal." The agency had set Frank up with services and was preparing to close their child protection case when Williams died, Dorantes said in a statement.

"The last contact with the children was in mid-June 2023 and based on the assessment at the time, further child protective services was not warranted — and the case was in the process of being closed — resulting in no additional visits or contact," Dorantes said in the statement.

Neighbors told officers that the children were often home without an adult, according to police reports. But it is unclear if anyone called DCF to report the concern.

"A simple gesture of offering help may change the life of a child and their caregiver," Dorantes said.

Frank has been charged with first-degree manslaughter and 10 counts of risk of injury to a child. She will face a judge again on Thursday when a bond hearing on the first-degree manslaughter charge will be held. She is free after posting $100,000 bond. It was not immediately clear how Frank was able to afford the bond.

Frank initially told police on July 22 that she left the apartment for a short time to get food and diapers and she believed the 2-year-old's father, Christopher Shand, was on his way to watch all five children. The child died two days later after suffering several skull fractures, police said.

Attorney Wesley Spears, who is working for free to represent Frank, said when the boy fell from the window on July 22 his client was driving back from dropping off an Uber customer in Cape Cod to earn money to support the children.

Frank told investigators she placed the oldest child, her 12-year-old daughter, in charge of the other four children while she was gone, the police report stated.

Williams, who was known as a happy little boy nicknamed "Papa," because he looked like his grandfather, fell headfirst from the apartment around 3:40 p.m., the police report said. The 12-year-old later admitted to a DCF social worker that she had been sleeping throughout the day and she thought her mother had been gone since the morning, a police report said.

"You make marginal calls when you are living in the margins," said Rev. Sam Saylor, who was at court last week in support of Frank and her family.

Saylor, pastor of the Gardener Memorial AME Zion Church in Springfield, lost a son about a decade ago and a 12-year-old granddaughter this year to gun violence in Hartford. He said he came forward to help the Frank family even though he had never met them because he understood the narrative of a Black woman making hard decisions to survive.

"I knew that this was a story about poverty and pain and trauma," he said.

Saylor and other supporters claim Frank's landlord, DCF, her family and others let her down by not stepping in to help even as she struggled to raise the children on her own.

Saylor said there were not enough child-protection shields for all of the windows in the apartment. He said Frank believed the children were not going into the rooms that didn't have the protective window shields.

"These margins are real," Saylor said. "You call it an apartment, I call it a survival box."