A 16-month-old baby suffered a near-fatal drug overdose Wednesday after finding and ingesting heroin from baggies belonging to his mother.
Daisha Clark, a 26-year-old mother living in Yorktown, Ind., allegedly found her infant son with a small plastic baggie in his mouth containing heroin Wednesday night, but failed to call for medical help. An unnamed cousin brought the baby to a local hospital where personnel revived the boy with a does of the overdose reversal drug Narcan, reports WISH TV.
The cousin told doctors that Clark did not want the baby to be taken to a hospital for treatment, saying he would survive. She faces a litany of charges including reckless possession of paraphernalia and child neglect.
“You have the addict who chooses to take the drug…but then when people who don’t make that choice to take the drugs are impacted or hurt in some way, I think that’s angering,” Eric Hoffman, Delaware County’s chief deputy prosecutor said, according to WISH TV. “I’m sure there are a lot that live in that horrible environment where they see their parents use heroin, abuse heroin, and they’re there for heroin deals.”
An 18-month old boy died from an opioid overdose June 4 in Ohio after his 9-year-old brother saw him playing with a drug baggie belonging to their mother. The mother, Destaine Carter, originally dialed 911 but hung up before officers could get an address.
The 9-year-old boy tried to get his mom back on the phone to speak with the dispatcher but was unsuccessful. The mother fled the scene when police arrived and was later arrested in another county for an outstanding warrant.
Social services in almost every state across the country are experiencing increases in children needing foster care due to the opioid crisis, and officials are nearing a breaking point.
Officials from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services said in 2015 that roughly 428,000 kids were in foster care, and note that number has likely experienced a significant increase due to skyrocketing drug abuse rates in 2016. Drug addiction is now the second leading cause for removal from parental custody, following child neglect, which social workers note is often exacerbated by drug use in the home.
A staggering 85,937 children entered foster care due to parental drug use in the U.S. in 2015, according to data from the Adoption and Foster Care Analysis and Reporting System.
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