https://www.wsj.com/articles/children-victims-of-the-fentanyl-crisis-11672412771
The Youngest Victims of the Fentanyl Crisis
Toddlers are dying after accidentally ingesting the potent synthetic opioid their parents use; a 2-year-old ‘ate mom’s pills’
Brianna Roush woke from a nap at home on a Sunday afternoon last January to find her 20-month-old son, Leightyn, disoriented and moaning.
By the time she got him to the hospital, he wasn’t breathing. Medical staff tried for an hour to revive him before pronouncing him dead.
“Come on Leightyn, baby, you’ve got to come back,” Ms. Roush pleaded, according to body-camera footage from a police officer in the hospital room. “Please Leightyn, honey, you’ve got to wake up, baby.”
A police report said the toddler died after ingesting fentanyl, the powerful synthetic opioid fueling record U.S. drug deaths. Police found a bag with fentanyl residue on the kitchen floor of the family’s home. Ms. Roush told investigators she had smoked the drug with Leightyn’s father, Nicholas Lee, at home the morning the boy died.
The Circleville, Ohio, boy who loved pizza and the cartoon “CoComelon” had become another statistic in an insidious permutation of the drug crisis—very young children poisoned by America’s increasingly toxic opioid supply. As fentanyl reaches every corner of the U.S., replacing less-potent opioids and heightening the risk of death for users, infants and toddlers are accidentally dying.
There were 133 opioid-related deaths among children younger than 3 last year, according to federal mortality data, up from 67 in 2020 and 51 in 2019. Synthetic opioids, a category that mostly is made up of fentanyl, accounted for most of the fatalities.
Parents who abuse opioids sometimes leave dangerous drugs within reach of children, making their homes treacherous terrain. The drive of some parents to feed their addiction eclipses their responsibilities to keep their children safe.
“These are the youngest and most vulnerable of the victims of the epidemic,” said Gregory Vincent, an associate medical examiner in Connecticut.
Dr. Vincent said he has identified eight fentanyl-related deaths among small children in Connecticut over the past three years, when fentanyl soared as a cause of death among all overdose victims. He couldn’t recall a fentanyl death among infants or toddlers before then.
The problem is the potency of the drugs children are exposed to, he said. As little as two milligrams of fentanyl—roughly the weight of a sesame seed—can be lethal to adults.
Calls to poison control hotlines for fentanyl exposure among small children have increased in recent years, according to data from America’s Poison Centers, a nonprofit.
In Munhall, Pa., 2-year-old Robert Kraft died in May after ingesting fentanyl at home, where police said they found empty drug packets strewn amid Lego blocks and a toy school bus.
“Robbie drank a little black thingee and he was gonna throw up,” a sibling of the boy told investigators. He said the “thingee” was “for daddy,” according to a criminal complaint.
Robert’s parents—James Kraft, 40, and Paige Hufnagel, 29—face charges including homicide. Both have pleaded not guilty and are awaiting a February trial date. Their attorneys declined to comment.
The tendency of infants and toddlers to explore the world by sticking things in their mouths makes them especially vulnerable to toxic substances, said Kaitlyn Brown, clinical managing director at America’s Poison Centers. And because of children’s small size, “it’s going to be a lot easier for them to obtain a lethal dose from something as potent as fentanyl,” Dr. Brown said.
Fentanyl has quickly become a child-welfare crisis in Louisiana, where the state’s Department of Children & Family Services has opened investigations into nine child deaths from the drug just this year. Among them was Mitchell Robinson, a 2-year-old boy in Baton Rouge who died in late June.
In April and again in early June, Mitchell was rushed to a hospital with respiratory distress and treated with the overdose-reversal drug naloxone, according to a police report included in court records. Drug screenings were negative at first. But another test following the second hospital trip showed fentanyl exposure, according to the Louisiana DCFS.
In late June, Mitchell suffered cardiac arrest. First responders tried to revive him with epinephrine and naloxone, but he was pronounced dead shortly after arriving at the hospital. The local coroner determined the cause was acute fentanyl toxicity. An older sister told investigators that the boy “ate mom’s pills,” the police report said.
Mitchell’s mother, 29-year-old Whitney Ard, is in jail facing a second-degree murder charge. She has pleaded not guilty. In a handwritten letter to the judge in her case, Ms. Ard said she had long battled opioid addiction and asked for help getting treatment. She described her son as a polite and nurturing boy who loved Spider-Man and the song “Who Let the Dogs Out.” She denied being careless.
“I barely eat or sleep and I constantly have daydreams about how I found my baby unresponsive,” she wrote.
Ms. Ard is artistic and holds a college degree in biology, but was derailed by an opioid problem, her mother and brother said. The family is grieving with and supporting Ms. Ard, they said.
They are angry that warning signs from Mitchell’s earlier hospital visits failed to raise enough alarms. They said he experienced seizures, and that the family didn’t suspect fentanyl.
“I just feel like our family wasn’t given the opportunity to show up and intervene,” said Adrian Ard Jr., Ms. Ard’s brother.
Mitchell’s death has put pressure on officials in Louisiana to respond faster when children are at risk from fentanyl. The state’s child-welfare agency said it was notified about Mitchell’s prior hospital trips and learned of his fentanyl exposure from the early June episode nine days before he died. Following an internal review, the agency said it failed to quickly follow up in person at the child’s home after speaking with Ms. Ard by phone.
DCFS Secretary Marketa Garner Walters resigned in November, following the fentanyl death of another child in the Baton Rouge area. Gov. John Bel Edwards said the state has hired an outside group to review the agency and recommend improvements.
Louisiana child-welfare officials this month met with counterparts from several other states to discuss the fentanyl crisis and ways to reduce risk, said Mona Michelli, deputy assistant secretary in child welfare at the DCFS. The agency also has urged police to report when children are present among people facing drug charges, she said.
Medics around the U.S. are responding to more calls involving potential opioid intoxications of young children, mostly due to fentanyl, said Dr. Ed Racht, chief medical officer for ambulance operator Global Medical Response. Naloxone administrations across the U.S. by GMR personnel for children 4 and under increased to 131 in 2021 from 80 in 2017, according to company data.
Sarah Morris, who supervises field training officers in northern Mississippi for GMR subsidiary American Medical Response, said she responded last year to a call involving a 6-month-old girl. The infant was pale, listless and not breathing. Her fingers and lips were blue, a sign of lack of oxygen.
The girl’s pupils were like pinpoints, Ms. Morris observed. That isn’t common in infants, but it is among opioid overdose victims. “Surely this baby has not overdosed,” Ms. Morris thought at the time.
Ms. Morris said she gave her a dose of naloxone. The girl stirred a bit but still wasn’t breathing. Ms. Morris administered a second dose. A minute later, the girl began wailing. Her fingers and lips regained their color. Medics took her to a hospital, where she tested positive for fentanyl and was treated successfully, Ms. Morris said.
She and other medics have adjusted their response to children with respiratory distress. They consider opioid intoxication higher on a checklist of potential causes, and more quickly administer naloxone, she said.
On a Saturday afternoon in December last year, first responders rushed to a Spokane, Wash., home where a 17-month-old girl was unresponsive, according to witness interviews cited in court records. Adults were in the house, including her parents. Police found drug paraphernalia including glass pipes and pieces of burned foil, the records show.
Three days later, the girl, Serenity Murfin Marusic, was removed from ventilation and died. Fentanyl was found in her system.
Police received conflicting reports about alleged drug use at the home, where Serenity’s parents were staying with friends, court records show. Serenity’s father, Frank Marusic, 32, was charged in her death. He pleaded guilty in November to a controlled-substance homicide and two counts of delivering a controlled substance, and he is now in a state prison.
In a phone interview from prison, Mr. Marusic said he has no idea how Serenity got fentanyl in her system. He said he pleaded guilty in part because police had evidence of him selling fentanyl-laced pills months earlier.
He said he is struggling to cope with losing his daughter, and he wants her death to serve as a warning to others about the risk of children being anywhere near fentanyl. “She was 100% everything I wanted in life,” Mr. Marusic said.
Serenity’s maternal grandmother, Sharon Murfin, has started a nonprofit in Serenity’s name to warn about the dangers of fentanyl. She said she has had conflicting feelings regarding Mr. Marusic since Serenity’s death, including anger but also sympathy, knowing that he grew up amid instability and abuse and has been tormented by grief.
The anniversary of Serenity’s death this month was difficult for the family. “I miss her voice her smile her walk her little sassyness, her little tiny hands,” Serenity’s mother, Teila Murfin, wrote on Facebook.
In Circleville, Ms. Roush, 27, and Mr. Lee, 26, long struggled with opioid addiction, said friends and family, who described them as devoted parents. The couple would take Leightyn and his older brother, Landyn, to the zoo and the park, said Diana Draise, Mr. Lee’s aunt. Leightyn was a “daddy’s boy,” always clinging to Mr. Lee’s hip, she said.
Ms. Roush’s Facebook page is full of photos of her two children and posts about the joys and challenges of motherhood. The week before Leightyn died, Ms. Roush posted a quote: “I’m the best mom for my kids, because my kids know they are loved.”
Ms. Roush told police that she and Mr. Lee smoked fentanyl in the bathroom and kept the drug out of reach of their children. A police search of the home after Leightyn was poisoned yielded, among other evidence, a blue plastic bag on the kitchen floor containing white powder residue and a jewelry box in a bedroom containing a yellow, rocklike substance.
The powder tested positive for fentanyl. The rock tested positive for acetyl fentanyl, a chemical cousin of fentanyl, police said.
The day Leightyn died, Landyn, then 3 years old, also tested positive for fentanyl and vomited repeatedly. He was treated successfully at the hospital. In the body-camera footage, Ms. Roush tended to Landyn while he was seated outside the hospital room where staff treated Leightyn.
“Look at Mommy—you OK?” Ms. Roush asked Landyn, who nodded. “You still feel dizzy?”
Landyn is in foster care, according to Heather Carter, a county assistant prosecuting attorney who handled the cases against the parents. Ms. Roush and Mr. Lee pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter and attempted involuntary manslaughter in August and were sentenced to between 19 and 24.5 years in prison. Neither responded to letters seeking comment.
After Ms. Roush asked Landyn how he was feeling, a doctor emerged from the room where Leightyn was being treated and urged her to go in because the boy’s condition was dire.
“No, no, no!” Ms. Roush screamed. “Please do something!”
He died shortly after.
America's Fentanyl Crisis
The synthetic opioid has spread to every corner of the illegal drug market and is driving overdose deaths to records.
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