Mother and grandmother charged in 11 month old baby fentanyl overdose death at Chester County, South Carolina home. Sharon Jordan and Joyce Stover charged.
A South Carolina mother and grandmother have been charged after an 11-month-old baby girl died from a fentanyl overdose in Chester County, deputies said.
Authorities were called to a home on Elizabeth Drive on Oct. 30 for reports of an unresponsive infant. First responders tried to resuscitate the child but the county coroner said the girl did not survive WBTV reported.
Upon further investigation, Chester County Sheriff’s investigators learned that the baby was in the legal care of her grandmother, Sharon Elaine Jordan, 55. Deputies say the mother, Joyce Renee Stover, 33, was visiting her child.
Stover, per DSS regulation, was allowed to visit her child but was not allowed to be alone with the baby. At some point, Jordan left the home temporarily, leaving the child and her biological mother unsupervised.
The baby’s grandfather told WSOC-TV that he was doing some repair work on the home and was in the process of replacing the gas lines. He said Jordan received a call from her brother and he told her about some cheap heaters at the pawnshop.
‘What are you doing? The baby needs to sleep,’
He said that rather than taking the child, Jordan left her with Stover for about 30 minutes to go look at the heaters.
Deputies said that once Jordan returned home, she found Stover asleep and the infant on the kitchen floor.
Jordan said her immediate response was ‘what are you doing? The baby needs to sleep,’ the incident report states
Jordan reportedly proceeded to pick the baby up and play with her for a moment before putting her in her crib. Jordan said the baby was acting normal at the time..
She put the child in a crib where shortly after, the infant was found unresponsive some thirty minutes later.
Deputies said they found bottles of naloxone in the crib with the baby. A toxicology report confirmed the baby died from a fentanyl overdose.
Naloxone is a medicine that rapidly reverses an opioid overdose, and is typically given to a person who shows signs of an opioid overdose.
Fentanyl-laced pills add to spike in overdoses
Fentanyl is a synthetic opioid pain reliever that is 50-100 times more potent than morphine, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention website.
‘It would be extremely more dangerous to a child than an adult. It’s dangerous even to an adult. Remember, it’s dosed in micrograms and a microgram is 1-1,000th of a milligram and milligram is how we dose other opioids,’ said Dr. Robert Supernaw of Wingate University School of Pharmacy according to WSOC-TV.
Jordan was charged with unlawful neglect of a child, and Stover was charged with murder by child abuse. They are both being held at the Chester County Detention Center and are expected to go before a magistrate on Tuesday.
Homicide by child abuse carries a potential sentence of 20 years in prison up to life for a conviction under South Carolina law.
