Toddler dies after mum mixes ‘formula with fentanyl’ so she could nap

Ellen Fitzpatrick

*Warning* Article mentions baby loss.

A nine-month-old baby has died after his mum allegedly mixed his formula with fentanyl after wanting to take a nap, police have confirmed.

The baby boy was found unresponsive with no pulse at a home in Callahan, Florida, on June 26 and while authorities attempted CPR, he later died in a hospital in Jacksonville.

According to Nassau County Sheriff Bill Leeper, the 17-year-old mum told investigators she didn’t know what had happened to her son but then changed her story in the weeks following as she was questioned by police.

An autopsy then revealed her son had died from a fentanyl overdose and had enough of the drug in his system to kill 10 people.

According to the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), even two milligrams of fentanyl can be fatal.

His death was ruled a fentanyl overdose on July 10th.

In a separate interview, the mum confessed that she had been feeling tired and wanted to take a nap on the day her son died.

She then admitted to filling a bottle with a mixture of formula before going into her bedroom and finding a pill bottle that had what she believed to be cocaine in it.

She then added the pills to her baby’s bottle which turned out to be fentanyl.

The sheriff said on Wednesday that the case was a “terrible, sad, and extremely tragic incident.”

He added at the press conference: “Our deputies respond to many situations every day, they see a lot. And it sometimes seems, over the years, that nothing surprises us anymore.

“But every now and then something does happen which really you really can’t explain, you can’t make up. You say to yourself, ‘What in the world were they thinking?’

“She laid him down in his crib to go to sleep and he never woke up. 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. No one should lose their life to this terrible, deadly drug, especially an innocent baby.”

The mum has now been charged with aggravated manslaughter and possession of a controlled substance and the case remains under investigation by the Nassau County Sheriff’s Office and the Florida Department of Children and Families.