Isenberg's daughter faces child injury charges

COEUR d’ALENE — The daughter of Lori Isenberg was arrested on a warrant Thursday and charged with injury to a child, a misdemeanor.

Isenberg, whose whereabouts are not known, is wanted on a $500,000 warrant for a felony charge of grand theft, and she is under investigation for her role in the death of her husband, Larry, whose body was found floating in Lake Coeur d’Alene last spring.

It is the second time Isenberg’s daughter, April E. Barnes, 42, has been charged with injury to a child. The first time, two years ago, Barnes was charged with two counts of child injury that were dismissed. The most recent charge stems from an incident in May, but Barnes failed to appear in court and a warrant was issued.

“Here we are, two years later, the same deplorable conditions,” city prosecutor Wesley J. Somerton told the court Friday at Barnes’s first appearance.

Police said Barnes’s residence, where she lived with her two children and an 8-month-old child, was in disarray and unclean.

“There was garbage all over the floor,” of the kitchen, according a police report. “There was garbage on all the counters, dirty dishes stacked so high I could barely see the sink … old food and a white powder substance all over the kitchen.”

The house, in the 600 block of Hattie Avenue, is owned by the city of Coeur d’Alene and the rental is handled by the North Idaho Housing Coalition, the nonprofit agency from which Lori Isenberg is alleged to have embezzled more than a half million dollars.

The coalition assists families with affordable housing in Idaho’s five northern counties.

While she worked for the Housing Coalition, Isenberg hired April Barnes to work as her assistant. Board members were unaware April was Isenberg’s daughter.

After her arrest in February, Isenberg, 64, posted bond and failed to appear for her court hearings. She has been under investigation for grand theft since then, and recently, court records show, she is also the subject of a homicide investigation.

Larry Isenberg, 68, was last seen by friends and neighbors a day before he went on a morning boat ride with his wife. His body was found in March floating near shore in Windy Bay.

Barnes was released on her own recognizance and ordered to appear at all her hearings.