A mum has been arrested for allegedly killing her newborn baby with “drugs transmitted through her breastmilk.”
Samantha Jones was charged with criminal homicide following the death of her baby son.
He died due to a combination of methadone, amphetamine and methamphetamine, believed to have been ingested by the infant when he was being breastfed.
The Pennsylvanian woman had been prescribed methadone because of an addiction to painkillers. She had been taking the prescription during her pregnancy and when the child passed away.
Jones said that on the morning her son died, the baby was crying and that she tried to breastfeed him because she was “too tired to go downstairs and prepare a bottle of formula.”
An hour later, she woke to find the infant pale, with bloody mucous coming from his nose. Jones phoned an ambulance but her son suffered a cardiac arrest and passed away at the hospital.
The mother had been primarily using formula prior to this.
Her defence has said that the child’s death was “not intentional, that Jones was not a flight risk and that she is not a danger to anyone.”
It is possible that Jones could face murder charges which carry a life sentence.
