NASSAU COUNTY, Fla. – Nassau County Sheriff Bill Leeper said a 9-month-old child died last month after the child’s teenage mother put fentanyl in the child’s bottle.
Leeper said deputies went to a home in Callahan on June 26 after it got a call that the 9-month-old boy was not breathing and had no pulse. The deputy who responded tried CPR, but the child later died at a Jacksonville hospital.
Investigators showed up and started to question the child’s 17-year-old mother. She told investigators she didn’t know what happened, Leeper said, but over the course of several interviews, her story changed.
Leeper said investigators learned on Tuesday through what he called a confession that on June 26, the mother was tired and wanted to take a nap so she went to give the child a bottle. Before she did, she filled the bottle with formula and what she thought was cocaine, Leeper said. But what she thought was cocaine turned out to be fentanyl, Leeper said.
According to the medical examiner’s office, the child had enough fentanyl in his system to kill 10 people.
“Who does that? What mother would do that? That’s not normal. It is sick. It’s beyond my imagination why a mother would do that to her child,” Leeper said. “No one should lose their life to this terrible deadly drug, especially an innocent baby.”
The mother is accused of aggravated manslaughter as well as possession of a controlled substance.
Due to Marsy’s Law, Leeper said the agency will not release the name of the child or the mother.
The Nassau County Sheriff’s Office and DCF are continuing to investigate the case.