An Ohio mother and grandmother are facing multiple charges after an 11-month-old became unresponsive following exposure to cocaine and marijuana.
A grand jury in Lorain County, Ohio, indicted 39-year-old grandmother Roxie McCall and 21-year-old mother Shanice McCall Thursday over the February incident, charging the pair with endangering children, obstructing official business and obstructing justice. The grandmother also faces a charge of permitting drug abuse, reported Cleveland.com.
Local authorities in Elyria, Ohio, received an emergency call from Shanice Feb. 2 claiming her infant banged her head on a bathroom sink and seemed tired. Paramedics dispatched to the home noted Roxie was acting strange and subsequently called police, who did not find anything noticeably wrong with the child. (RELATED: Kindergartner Puts Bag Of Cocaine In Mouth After Finding It In Classmate’s Backpack)
Shanice later took the 11-month-old to University Hospitals Elyria Medical Center, where she also told hospital personnel that her child suffered a head injury. Doctors performed a scan but found nothing wrong, however, the infant soon become unresponsive, reported The Chronicle.
Doctors had difficulty reviving the baby, who was taken to Rainbow Babies and Children’s Hospital, where a blood test came up positive for both cocaine and marijuana.
It remains unclear how the child became exposed to cocaine.
Children are increasingly the victims of rampant drug addiction throughout the country. A mother in Ohio is facing multiple drug charges after her 7-year-old son showed up to school under the influence of cocaine and was hospitalized.
Teachers noticed the child appeared unusually tired when he arrived at North Elementary School in Urbana, Ohio, on April 16 and subsequently became unresponsive during lunch. Paramedics were called and rushed the boy to Urbana Mercy Health Hospital for treatment, where doctors discovered he had cocaine in his system. He was successfully treated and made a full recovery.
Narcotics are killing a record number of people in Ohio, which now has the second highest death rate from drug overdoses in the U.S. behind only West Virginia, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The state lost 4,329 residents to drug overdoses in 2016, a 24-percent increase over 2015, largely due to a massive influx of the synthetic opioid fentanyl. Nearly 40 per 100,000 people now die from drug-related overdoses in Ohio.
Nationally, drug overdoses are now the leading cause of accidental death for Americans under age 50, claiming more than 64,000 lives in 2016.
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