Jhenea Pratt: Pennsylvania mother found guilty of involuntary manslaughter after giving her baby fentanyl in a sippy cup so she could relax her child.
A Pennsylvania mom accused of giving her baby fentanyl in a ‘sippy cup’ so she could return to smoking pot has been found guilty in the child’s death.
Jhenea Pratt, 23, was convicted Tuesday in Allegheny County Court of involuntary manslaughter and endangering the welfare of her 17-month-old daughter, KOCO reported.
The jury acquitted the mom of homicide charges in the April 5, 2018, death of Charlette Napper-Talley, who was poisoned by a fentanyl cocktail at their East Hills apartment.
Prosecutors argued Pratt fed her baby the fatal mixture because she wanted to ‘sit back, relax and smoke marijuana,’ according to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
‘That baby was getting in the way of her enjoying her pastime,’ Assistant District Attorney Diana Page told the court.
Tonight at 5: The verdict is in for the Jhenea Pratt case. She was charged in her baby’s death after fentanyl was found in a sippy cup. @KDKA pic.twitter.com/ELSHfj35B4
— Amy Wadas (@AmyWadas) June 4, 2019
Jhenea Pratt incredulous as to how fentanyl ended up in her child’s sippy cup:
Police responding to the home in April 2018 – discovered a red liquid inside a pink sippy cup that contained enough fentanyl to ‘kill two horses,’ according to an arrest report.
Pratt told police she gave her daughter the cup and put her to sleep about an hour before she found her unresponsive in bed.
Jurors were shown footage of detectives questioning Pratt about the deadly opioid inside the cup — with the mom claiming the drug may have come from a fruit-flavored ‘happy drink.’
‘I have no knowledge as to how fentanyl got into my daughter’s sippy cup,’ Pratt was heard saying in the footage.
Adding, ‘I’m just as clueless as you are. So are you implicating that I put fentanyl in my child’s sippy cup?’
Pratt’s court-appointed lawyer argued that she may ‘smoke weed every now and then’ while maintaining the mother, ‘wasn’t responsible for her daughter’s death’.
Her attorney, Brandon Herring, claimed the mom’s boyfriend, Albert Williams, prepared the fatal mixture in the sippy cup for her daughter.
‘Albert had access to fentanyl and he prepared the sippy cup,’ Herring told the court. ‘The prosecution hasn’t provided any evidence that Ms. Pratt put the fentanyl in that cup.’
The date for Pratt’s sentencing has not been set.
Of note, more than 71,500 Americans have died of a drug overdose in 2017, according to data released the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The majority—or least 68 percent—of those deaths could be attributed to opioids such as fentanyl.
