A Washington man, 37 year old Eric Emil Lehtinen, has been accused of repeatedly jabbing his 4 year old son with needles and injecting him with heroin and a cocktail of other drugs, among them ketamine, morphine and codeine. The attack purportedly came on the day of his divorce with his former wife.
Upon injecting his son, the man then went on to inject himself high dosages of drugs. It wasn’t until the mother of the child came to the man’s house to pick up her son after a job interview that she found both Lehtinen and the 4 year old boy unconscious in the man’s bed.
Police went on to tell that the mother went on to find a needle sticking out of the boy’s chest after pulling back bed covers.
At the time both father and son were rushed to hospital were they went on to both survive.
The Seattle Post-Intelligencer reports that Lehtinen’s wife of six years allowed the couple’s son to stay with Lehtinen despite her husband’s history as both a heroin addict and a heroin dealer.
Whilst the four year old boy is still recovering at Seattle Children’s Hospital it is unknown whether he will suffer long-term damage from the drugs that were pumped into his system.
Prosecutors believe Lehtinen was trying to kill the boy and himself with drugs – but failed.
Lt. Charlie Gorman told q13fox.com: ‘In 35 years as a police officer I’ve never run across anything like this.’
A neighbor added: “I just don’t understand how messed up you have to be to inject your 4-year-old with heroin. Never heard of anything like this, never even had the thought cross my mind of anything like this happening in the world.”
In the final terms of the child-custody order, the mother wanted to require drug tests for Lehtinen.
Lehtinen has since been charged with attempted murder in the first degree.
Then there was this reflection on the web that made me wonder as well:
Now the real question is that if he’s the kind of monster that injects a drug cocktail into a 4 year old and she’s the kind of person that knowingly leaves her child in the care of a known heroin addict and dealer are either of them even close to fit parents?
above image found here
