Indiana couple, Tessa Rose Murray and Nerrell McCoy are charged after treating a ten month baby girl with marijuana for a broken leg.
Tessa Rose Murray, 23 and her boyfriend, Nerrell McCoy, 20 have been arrested after the Indiana couple allegedly gave the woman’s 10 month old baby daughter marijuana to treat her broken leg.
Upon their arrest on Monday the Muncie couple were each charged with ‘two counts of neglect of a dependent’ according to The Star Press.
Both Murray and McCoy are currently being held at the Delaware County jail with bond set at $10,000 each.
Matters came to a head when on June 28 the infant was taken to IU Health Ball Memorial Hospital to treat a ‘dislocated femur fracture’.
Muncie Police Department investigator Kris Swanson said that the hospital notified the authorities soon after the girl was admitted.
During questioning, the mother told investigators that her daughter broke her leg after falling off a sofa.
Murray later changed her account, stating her daughter was injured when another child pulled on it while she was falling from a bed.
Tessa Rose Murray Indiana mom had custody of baby daughter taken away the previous year.
After securing a warrant, Swanson said the department searched Murray’s cell phone and discovered an exchange with McCoy dating to five days earlier on June 13.
Read a text message, sent by McCoy to the child’s mother, ‘(The baby) prolly(sic) needs some weed and she will be good for now’.
McCoy also said that he thought the child was suffering from a ‘muscle or tendon injury’, and said he had put her leg ‘in a book splint’.
Swanson later stated in an affidavit that the child tested ‘positive for marijuana in excess of what could be attributed to second-hand smoke’.
The couple admitted that they did not provide proper medical care for the small child.
Of note, the baby girl had been taken away from Murray’s custody the year before reported the daillymail. It wasn’t immediately clear what passage of events led to the child at the time being taken away, and later returned to the couple.
In two pending Muncie City Court cases, both filed in July, McCoy is charged with possession of marijuana.
