Family sought help through GoFundMe

Couple charged after toddler son found in street

Six weeks before police found the 3-year-old son of Joel Coffey alone Thursday on a North Braddock street, a social media request titled “Help for the Coffeys” detailed a series of recent setbacks suffered by a family.

The GoFundMe.com campaign was created Sept. 11 by a man named Joel Coffey of Braddock. The page, which raised $690 of its $1,000 goal, describes unrelated family and professional hardships after the premature birth of his son.

“I wish I could tell you that we rode off into the sunset and are the picture of happiness, but that couldn’t be further from the truth,” the author wrote.

Mr. Coffey, 38, and Athena Coffey, 39, were arraigned Friday after their son was found about 8:40 a.m. Thursday in the middle of the street in the 1400 block of Grandview Avenue. Police said the family’s secondfloor duplex — on the same street where the toddler was found — contained bottles and open cups of urine, hypodermic needles, empty heroin stamp bags and garbage.

The GoFundMe post, which includes a photo of a young girl holding a newborn with breathing tubes in his nose, describes the difficulties a woman named Athena faced during her 2015 pregnancy. She spent much of her pregnancy in and out of the hospital, with undisclosed complications that made it hard for

her to walk, the author wrote. Their son was born four weeks premature with underdeveloped lungs and spent his first month of life in the hospital, the author said.

Less than a year later, the author’s mother was diagnosed with terminal cancer and died months later, the post read.

Then the author lost his job as an insurance underwriter and was unemployed for 2½ years, he wrote. He briefly drove a taxi and stayed at home with his son while applying for other jobs, the post said.

He recently began training to become an emergency medical technician through a federal program that covered tuition and book costs, he said in the post. But he claimed to have created the GoFundMe page to defray other costs and to take his family to the zoo together for the first time.

“[My son] has brought me through what will probably be remembered as the darkest time of my life, and I would very much like to show him how much he means to me,” the author wrote.

Mr. Coffey was arraigned on a single count of endangering the welfare of children, and Ms. Coffey was charged with reckless endangerment and a felony count of endangering the welfare of children, according to criminal complaints. They face a preliminary hearing Nov. 6.

Donors on the GoFundMe did not immediately respond to queries Friday.