Baltimore has made national news after Towanda Reaves was charged with second-degree murder and child abuse. The grandmother confessed that she had rubbed the drug methadone on the gums of her 17-month-old grandson to get him to fall asleep.
Here an excerpt of the news from CBS Baltimore’s WJZ.
According to the 50-year-old woman, she put the grandkids to bed at 8 p.m. and when she peeked in on them at 2 a.m., she found the boy to be unresponsive so she called paramedics.
A chief medical examiner listed methadone intoxication as the toddler’s cause of death. After police delved further in to Reaves’ story, she wound up allegedly confessing that she had actually rubbed methadone — which is sometimes prescribed as a painkiller but typically used to wean addicts off drugs like heroin — on the children’s gum lines so that they would sleep. The children’s father was asleep on the couch while Reaves attended to the toddlers. Her granddaughter who was in her care was given a toxicology test at the hospital and methadone was also found in her system.
This is sad on so many levels
