Mother Charged in Fentanyl Death of 1-Year-Old Son

Wire Service
By Wire Service
May 31, 2019US News
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Mother Charged in Fentanyl Death of 1-Year-Old Son
A vial of heroin and another of fentanyl, during a news conference, Washington, on March 22, 2018. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

New York City—Police in New York City have made an arrest in the case of the overdose death of a 1-year-old boy: his mother.

Daira Santana-Gonzalez, 23, was charged last week with second-degree murder, according to a press release from the New York Police Department.

In December, police were alerted to an unconscious 1-year-old in the Bronx and came upon Santana-Gonzalez, her son and the son’s father in a taxi outside of their apartment building, according to a law enforcement official with knowledge of the case.

The child was unconscious and unresponsive, the NYPD said in a press release. Officers attempted to revive the boy while transporting him to a nearby hospital, where he was pronounced dead.

The boy died from acute exposure to fentanyl and heroin, among other drugs, according to the New York City office of the chief medical examiner. The death was ruled a homicide.

The official told CNN that drug paraphernalia, including glassine envelopes typically used to package heroin, was found inside the kitchen of the Bronx apartment.

Santana-Gonzalez has been in custody since January, when she was arrested for criminal possession of a controlled substance after narcotics were found in her home, the official said.

There are three people who police are still seeking in the investigation, and police believe that at least one of them is overseas. The NYPD is working with its federal partners to apprehend these individuals, the official said.

An attorney for Santana-Gonzalez did not immediately respond to CNN’s requests for comment. She is next scheduled to appear in Bronx Supreme Court on June 6.

Fentanyl

More than 71,500 Americans 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.

fentanyl-opioids-drugs-overdose-sanjay-gupta-mobile-orig-mss-00000000-exlarge-169
Fentanyl is 50 to 100 times more potent than morphine and 30 to 50 times more potent than heroin. (CNN)

“[Chinese drug makers] have been using the internet to sell fentanyl and fentanyl analogues to drug traffickers and individual customers in the United States,” said Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein in a statement on Oct. 17, 2017.

In August, 2018, President Donald Trump urged the Senate to pass a measure to stop synthetic opioid drugs such as fentanyl from being transported into the United States via the U.S. Postal Service system.

“It is outrageous that Poisonous Synthetic Heroin Fentanyl comes pouring into the U.S. Postal System from China,” he wrote on Aug. 20.

The shipment of fentanyl from China to the U.S. is “almost a form of warfare,” Trump said in August. “In China, you have some pretty big companies sending that garbage and killing our people,” Trump added.

NTD Staff contributed to this report.

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