An Española police officer charged a woman with child abuse, Sept. 10, after she allegedly overdosed in a car with a “small child” present.
Officer Darren Cruz arrested Nancy Salcedo, 21, of Española, on a charge of child abuse, a third-degree felony, with a maximum sentence of three years.
The case started when Cruz was sent to the Española Presbyterian Hospital for a reported child abuse case. Security guard Michael Garcia told him that a man was brought into the hospital by his girlfriend because he was overdosing, he wrote in a statement of probable cause for Salcedo’s arrest.
As the man was in the hospital, Garcia overheard him on the phone talking to a person, telling them to give a woman a dose of the opiate overdose-reversing drug naloxone, also known as Narcan, he wrote.
That person, later identified as a neighbor, arrived at the emergency room with a “small child,” identified as a 3-year-old girl. Cruz talked to the man who brought in the child and he said he received a call from his neighbor, asking him to check on his girlfriend and niece. When he walked over, he saw the girlfriend, Salcedo, slumped over in a car. The child was also in the vehicle.
“(He) advised that he saw a box of Narcan inside the vehicle and gave the female two doses of Narcan and the female came out of the overdose,” Cruz wrote. “(He) advised that he got the small child and went to the hospital.”
The mother came to the hospital and took custody of her child and said she was at work when she was told what happened. She said the man’s girlfriend, Salcedo, “was at her residence and she did not want her there,” Cruz wrote.
Officers went to the house on East Jiron Street and read her the Miranda Warning, including her right to remain silent. She told officers that she overdosed and someone took the child, Cruz wrote.
“Nancy then became aggressive and yelling profanity’s (sic) at officers,” he wrote.
Officers arrested her on the child abuse charges.
The following day, Rio Arriba Magistrate Judge Joseph Madrid released Salcedo on her own recognizance and ordered that she cannot have contact with the child per the Children, Youth and Families Department, although it appears her relationship to the child is that her boyfriend is the girl’s uncle.
A status conference is set for Oct. 1.