Two children were taken away from their parents on Nov. 9 by the Children, Youth and Families Department after one of them, age unlisted, overdosed on opiates, which the parents blamed on a tainted candy sample.
Neither parent has been charged with a crime following the child’s overdose. The children were taken away for at least five days.
Española City Police Officer Shaun Olson wrote in an incident report that he was sent to the Española Hospital after an emergency room doctor, Alexander Vining, called in the case. The child, identified by the initials N.M., was taken in at 8:45 a.m. for shallow breathing. Vining wanted to rule out what could have caused the shallow breathing and gave the child naloxone, the drug that reverses opiate overdoses. The child reacted to the drug, so he took a urine sample and sent it to the hospital lab. It came back positive for fentanyl.
The parents, 20-year-old mother and 28-year-old father told the doctor, and then officers, that they drove from Las Vegas, Nevada for a family wedding and got home around 4 a.m. and that while in Las Vegas, a man was handing out candy and the child took a piece, which they claimed must have been laced with fentanyl, Olson wrote.
The mother told officers that the candy, a sample, was handed out by a “Hindustani” man at an outlet mall. N.M. took the candy, described as a red gummy bear and a green gumdrop with sour “sanding” in a self-sealing clear package. They drove back from Las Vegas and when they got home, they all went to sleep and her husband woke her up and told her that their son was not acting like himself and they rushed him to the La Joya Street fire department. From there, the boy was taken to the hospital, Olson wrote. She denied using drugs, he wrote.
The father told Olson that around 6 a.m., he put his son on the floor and when he stopped hearing his child playing, he checked on him, saw him nodding off and noted shallow breathing, then they rushed to the fire station. He, too, denied using drugs, Olson wrote.
Olson secured the candy in his unit, although it is unclear from his report if the child is alleged to have eaten an entire candy, or just a piece, and if what he secured and later tested was the same piece the child consumed, or a different one, he wrote.
Detective Dwayne Epling took over the case and had Olson use a test kit on both pieces of candy. The test came back negative for fentanyl on both, he wrote.
Officers went with the father to his house and searched it for drugs. They didn’t find anything, Olson wrote.
A case worker with the Children, Youth and Families Department then put together a “5 day safety plan” for the two children, which involved them staying with their grandmother and not being able to see their parents, Olson wrote.
According to a search of New Mexico court records, neither of the parents has a criminal record.