There were no toys and no bicycles on the front lawn — only weeds that sometimes reached six feet tall.

Neighbors rarely saw the 13 siblings who lived inside the home in a quiet neighborhood in Southern California, because they never went outside to play. Instead, authorities said, they were held captive in a dirty and foul-smelling house, some shackled to the furniture with chains and padlocks.

Minutes before sunrise Sunday, a 17-year-old girl escaped from the home in Perris, not far from Los Angeles, slipping through a window and dialing 911 on a deactivated cellphone, Capt. Greg Fellows of the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department said Tuesday at a news conference. Under federal law, cellphones — even those that are no longer operational — must be able to call emergency services.

Deputies met the teenager, who reported that she and her siblings were being held against their will.

Fellows said she showed them photos that convinced them to believe her and conducted a welfare check at the home. There, he said, deputies found a dozen other siblings, age 2 to 29, malnourished and living in what authorities called “horrific” conditions.

“We do need to acknowledge the courage of the young girl who escaped from that residence to bring attention so they could get the help that they so needed,” he said during the news conference.

Fellows said he could not provide details about the scene, but told reporters, “If you can imagine being 17 years old and appearing to be a 10-year-old, being chained to a bed, being malnourished and the injuries associated with that — I would call that torture.” He said there was no evidence to indicate sexual abuse but noted that authorities are still investigating the circumstances.

The biological parents, David Allen Turpin, 57, and Louise Anna Turpin, 49, have been arrested on charges of torture and child endangerment, authorities said.

The Riverside County Sheriff’s Department said in an earlier news release that the 13 siblings all appeared to be children, so deputies were “shocked” to discover that seven of them are adults.

They appeared malnourished and dirty and told authorities that they were starving.

Authorities gave them food and beverages, then the six minors were taken to Riverside University Hospital System Medical Center for treatment, according to the sheriff’s department. The seven older siblings were taken to a different hospital.

Kimberly Trone, a spokeswoman for the Riverside County Regional Medical Center in Moreno Valley, said Tuesday that the minors were admitted into the pediatrics unit for treatment Sunday but that she could not comment on their conditions. However, she noted that the patients, who range in age from 2 to 17, were taken to the sheriff’s department before being transported to the hospital.

Corona Regional Medical Center spokeswoman Linda Pearson confirmed Tuesday that the seven adult siblings were being treated at the hospital, but did not elaborate.

Susan von Zabern, with the Riverside County Department of Public Social Services, said during the news conference that social services officials are seeking court authorization to provide care for the siblings, including the adults, if necessary.

Authorities said that David and Louise Turpin were “unable to immediately provide a logical reason” why their children were shackled and chained and that Louise Turpin seemed “perplexed” by the investigators’ questions. After an interview with police, the two were arrested. Bail is set at $9 million each.

A public information officer for the Riverside County District Attorney’s Office said no criminal case has yet been filed, so no court documents are available. The couple is expected to be arraigned Thursday, so prosecutors have until then make a decision, he said.

Perris Mayor Michael Vargas said he was “devastated by this act of cruelty.”

“I can’t begin to imagine the pain and suffering they have endured,” he said.

David Turpin’s parents, James and Betty Turpin of West Virginia, told ABC News that they were “surprised and shocked” by the allegations. They said their son and daughter-in-law, whom they have not seen for several years, are religious and kept having children because “God called on them.”

The grandparents said that the children are home-schooled, made to memorize long scriptures in the Bible. Some of the children, the grandparents told ABC News, have tried to memorize the entire book.

Louise Turpin’s sister, Teresa Robinette, told NBC News Tuesday that the discovery of the childrens’ living conditions felt “like a bad dream.”

“I’m seriously so heartbroken for my nieces and nephews,” she said. “I can’t even say the words to you that I would like to say to [Louise Turpin]. I’m so angry inside. I’m mad. I’m hurt.”

David Turpin is listed in a state Department of Education directory as the principal of Sandcastle Day School, a private K-12 school that he ran from the couple’s home. The school opened in 2011, according to the directory. In the 2016-2017 year, the school enrolled six students — one in each the fifth, sixth, eighth, ninth, 10th and 12th grades.

Fellows, with the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department, said Tuesday that there is no indication that other students were involved in the school. He also said that authorities have no information about any involvement with any religious organization.

Fellows said the Turpins have lived in the city since 2014 and that authorities had never been called to the residence in that time.

But according to public records, the couple own the home and have lived there since 2010. They previously lived in Texas for many years and have twice declared bankruptcy.

The Turpins most recently filed for bankruptcy in California in 2011. According to court documents, David Turpin made about $140,000 per year as an engineer at Northrop Grumman. The couple listed about $150,000 in assets, including $87,000 in 401(k) plans from Northrop Grumman and Lockheed Martin. Louise Turpin’s occupation was listed as a “homemaker.” The couple owed debt between $100,000 and $500,000, according to bankruptcy documents.

One of their bankruptcy lawyers, Nancy Trahan, said in a phone interview with The Washington Post on Monday evening that she met with the couple about four or five times in 2011 but hasn’t seen them since then. She described them as “just very normal.”

“They seemed like very nice people,” Trahan said. “They spoke often and fondly of their children.”

She did not recall hearing about a school run from their home.

“I just hope those kids are okay,” Trahan said. “I wouldn’t have seen it coming.”

Photos on a Facebook page that appeared to be created by David and Louise Turpin show the couple at Disneyland with the children, wearing matching shirts. Several photos appeared to be taken at a wedding ceremony. The parents posed in bride and groom attire, surrounded by 10 female children smiling for the camera in matching purple plaid dresses and white shoes. Three male children stood behind them wearing suits.

The couple’s middle-class neighborhood is a new tract housing development of ranch-style homes located about 70 miles east of Los Angeles. The homes were all built close together, with only about five feet between the houses.

Andria Valdez, a neighbor, told the Press-Enterprise that she had teased in the past that the Turpins reminded her of the Cullen family from the fictional series “Twilight.”

“They only came out at night,” she told the newspaper. “They were really, really pale.”

Shortly after Kimberly Milligan, 50, moved to the neighborhood in June 2015, a contractor for the development told her the Turpins had about a dozen children, she said in an interview with The Post.

But in the years that followed, Milligan rarely heard the children and only occasionally saw three or four of the children briefly leave or enter the home. Milligan found this particularly odd, because their houses are only about 50 feet apart from each other.

“I thought they were very young — 11, 12, 13 at the most — because of the way they carried themselves,” Milligan said. “When they walked they would skip.” They all looked very thin, their skin as white as paper, said Robert Perkins, Milligan’s son.

And their yard would “always look in disarray,” Milligan said. Code enforcement officials “cracked down” on the overgrown weeds in the front yard, several neighbors told media outlets.

Milligan recounted speaking to the children once, around Christmas 2015. Three of the children were setting up a Nativity display while she was out for a walk. When she complimented the children on the decorations, “they actually froze,” she said. Milligan apologized, telling them that there was no need to be afraid.

“They still did not say a word,” Milligan said. “They were like children whose only defense was to be invisible.”

Milligan said she started seeing less and less of the family in the last year or so. She said she feels a bit guilty for not saying something about the family’s oddities earlier.

“You knew something was off. It didn’t make a lot of sense,” Milligan said. “But this is something else entirely.”

Law enforcement officers could be seen at the family’s home from about 8 a.m. to 9 p.m. Sunday, Perkins said. He managed to briefly glance inside the open door of the home and noticed a messy array of boxes and chairs all over the place, he said.

One neighbor, Josh Tiedeman, told the Associated Press that the children were “super skinny — not like athletic skinny, like malnourished skinny.”

“They’d all have to mow the lawns together, and then they’d all go in,” Tiedeman said.

Mark Uffer, chief executive of Corona Regional Medical Center, said during the news conference Tuesday that the adult siblings have been “friendly” and “cooperative.”

Although medical experts acknowledged that the siblings will likely require long-term psychological support to aid in their recovery, Uffer said, “I believe that they’re hopeful life will get better for them.”

Marwa Eltagouri contributed to this report.

This post has been updated.

More from Morning Mix:

Fox drops Patty Hearst biopic after she blasts the Jeffrey Toobin book it was based on

House Republican leaders presented their rank and file with a one-month spending bill Tuesday aimed at keeping the government open ahead of a Friday night deadline, as hopes for a deal on young undocumented immigrants faded.

The bill would extend existing spending levels through Feb. 16 and include an extension of a popular children’s health insurance program — aimed at winning Democratic votes — and a new sweetener for conservatives and Democrats alike in delaying several taxes included in the Affordable Care Act. Few lawmakers were enthusiastic about the legislation, but several described it as a necessary evil to avoid the first government shutdown since 2013.

Rep. Mark Amodei (R-Nev.) said leaders urged lawmakers to get behind the bill and make sure it could garner the Republican votes needed without having to appeal to Democrats. “Keep the power of 218 going so you don’t weaken the majority position by having to get votes from the minority,” he said.

“We are where we are, and I think it’s important to fund the government and do these other things,” said Rep. Tom MacArthur (R-N.J.). MacArthur accused Democrats of “the height of stubbornness” if they vote against the bill because it doesn’t include a solution for “dreamers,” hundreds of thousands of immigrants brought to the country illegally as children.

Shortly thereafter, leaders released the legislation online. They planned to test support Wednesday and bring the bill to a vote Thursday, according to multiple members. It was not immediately clear whether they would be successful.

Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.), who chairs the conservative Freedom Caucus, said that the legislation doesn’t yet have the votes needed to pass and he hasn’t decided how to vote. He dismissed the health-care tax delays as “window dressing.”

The Freedom Caucus huddled late Tuesday to discuss the legislation, and Meadows emerged dour about its prospects.

“At this point with the undecided votes and no votes in the conference there are not enough votes to pass a [continuing resolution] with Republicans only,” he said.

Assuming it passes the House, the bill would then head to the Senate.

Meanwhile, Democrats are seeking concessions and threatening to block even a short-term spending measure if they don’t get them.

“We don’t want to shut down the government — we never want to,” House Democratic Whip Steny H. Hoyer (D-Md.) told reporters. “We want to keep the government open, but I will repeat, we’re not going to be held hostage to do things we think are contrary to the best interest of the American people.”

Democrats have leverage in the spending fight because their votes are needed to keep the government open — definitely in the Senate but possibly also in the House unless Republicans can unify behind the short-term proposal.

The bill released Tuesday night extends the Children’s Health Insurance Program for six years and delays the implementation of two widely unpopular taxes included in the Affordable Care Act, one on medical devices and one on high-value “Cadillac” insurance plans. Both would delayed for two years. A third tax, on health insurers, would be delayed for a year.

White House legislative director Marc Short played down the chance of a shutdown, but he dismissed Democratic demands that any must-pass spending bill include a fix for the young immigrants who are losing deportation protections granted by the Obama administration.

“We think we will avoid a shutdown. It’s important to avoid a shutdown. You’ve seen the president’s messaging about the need to make sure that our troops are funded. I think you’ll see him continue to make that case,” Short told reporters after meeting with top congressional aides of both parties in the office of House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.).

“I’m not sure why funding our troops is tied to a deal for illegal aliens,” Short added.

Government funding runs out Friday at midnight. Unless new spending legislation passes before then, federal agencies will begin to shut down Saturday, sending federal workers home and halting taxpayer services.

But the spending fight has become tied up in the fate of the dreamers. Some 690,000 of these immigrants are already at risk of losing temporary work permits after President Trump canceled the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which protected them from deportation. Others have already lost their protections, and remaining work permits will begin to expire March 5 unless Congress acts, although the Department of Homeland Security just started accepting renewal applications again under a federal court order.

Hoyer declined to say definitively whether Democrats would oppose the short-term spending bill. But he said Democrats did not want to vote in favor of a fourth short-term bill that continues existing spending levels absent an agreement for a broader two-year funding deal and a solution for immigrant youths.

Separately, Rep. Michelle Lujan Grisham (D-N.M.), who chairs the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, said her group of roughly three dozen Democrats will oppose a spending bill if there isn’t a fix for DACA and the dreamers.

“If we don’t get DACA fixed . . . that strategy will stay,” she said.

But a deal on dreamers looked ever more remote as senators on the Judiciary Committee grilled Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen about the immigration meeting in the Oval Office on Thursday in which Trump used derogatory language to describe Haiti and African countries.

She said she didn’t recall him uttering the phrase in question.

And in a new wrinkle that could further complicate talks, the administration appeared to boost its demands for funding for Trump’s border wall. The administration recently made public a request for $18 billion over 10 years for the wall, which Democrats rejected with outrage.

But Tuesday, Sen. Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.) suggested that Trump asked for even more during Thursday’s meeting, at which Durbin and Nielsen both were present.

“Do you remember the president saying he wanted $20 billion now and he would build that wall within one year?” Durbin asked Nielsen.

“I do remember him saying that,” Nielsen replied. “I remember him asking is there any way to authorize the full down payment of the wall such that we could have assurances that we could in fact build it.”

According to a senior administration official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to talk freely, Trump wants Congress to fully authorize all of the wall money in exchange for a DACA fix. That is not a deal any Democrat would take, given the party’s opposition to Trump’s wall.

For their part, GOP defense hawks were fuming at the prospect of voting for a fourth stopgap, but some key lawmakers stopped short of threatening to oppose it and slammed Democrats for playing politics with the military.

“In one way or another, you cannot allow somebody to continue to play political games given the state of the world and the state of our military,” said House Armed Services Committee Chairman Mac Thornberry (R-Tex.), who remained undecided about his support Tuesday evening.

He said that he was unsure whether a government shutdown would ultimately help defense spending levels. “There’s various theories on that,” he said. “Does it draw attention to the problem? Or is it just more drama that doesn’t really help the military? I don’t know.”

[Trump says that he is ‘not a racist,’ denies souring chances for immigration overhaul by using vulgarity]

Democrats, too, were uncertain where the blame would fall if they pushed the government into shutdown over immigration. Many have been hesitant to pursue that strategy, although their resolve appears to have been strengthened by the furor around last week’s Oval Office meeting, where Trump reportedly referred to “shithole” countries in Africa and questioned the need for more Haitians in the United States.

Hoyer said that for Democrats in the minority, the possibilities for leverage are few.

“We don’t have very many tools available to us to say, ‘Look, let’s get to issue on matters on which we should agree,’ ” he said.

In the Senate, at least nine Democrats would have to join all Republicans for the spending bill to get the 60 votes needed to pass. Democrats from red states, including those up for reelection next year, may be hard-pressed to oppose a must-pass spending bill, especially one that includes funding for the children’s health plan.

Newly elected Sen. Doug Jones (D-Ala.), who campaigned in support of funding the insurance program, acknowledged Tuesday that “it’s going to be tough” for him to vote against a spending bill that reauthorizes the program.

In addition to a fix for dreamers, Democrats are pushing for discretionary domestic spending to match military spending in the two-year budget deal lawmakers are trying to write. Republicans are opposed to that, but some members of both parties say that if immigration were resolved, other issues would fall into place, including the broader spending plan and a disaster-relief bill for Florida, Texas, Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands.

As the squabbling continued among lawmakers, more than 300 immigrants with DACA protections poured into the Senate’s office buildings Tuesday to pressure key Republicans to swiftly pass a bill that would grant them U.S. citizenship. Among those with the protections were a nurse, a teacher, and college students from Texas, Arizona, New York, Idaho, Florida and other states. They said they hoped to avoid a government shutdown.

“Our goal is for the Dream Act to be passed by January 19,” said Edwin Romero, a 26-year-old legal assistant brought to the United States from Mexico when he was 6. “The Republicans have the power in the House, the Senate and the White House. So if there is a government shutdown, it’s on them. It’s in their hands.”

[Washington braces for prolonged government shutdown]

On Tuesday, Trump appeared to dig in over his demands for a “great wall.”

“We must have Security at our VERY DANGEROUS SOUTHERN BORDER, and we must have a great WALL to help protect us, and to help stop the massive inflow of drugs pouring into our country!” Trump tweeted.

Ed O’Keefe, Damian Paletta and Maria Sacchetti contributed to this report.