Tallahassee police: Mom arrested for manslaughter after child dies from fentanyl overdose

A woman was arrested after her 3-year-old son, whom she had given to a man who supplied her with drugs, ingested fentanyl and acetaminophen and died, according to the Tallahassee Police Department.

Cameren Lakayla Evans, 35, was arrested Thursday on a charge of aggravated manslaughter of a child. She was booked into the Leon County Detention Facility, where she is being held without bond.

On the morning of Jan. 23, TPD officers and Leon County Emergency Medical Services responded to a report of an “unresponsive” child at Gibbs Mabry Village Apartments on Roberts Avenue. The child, who had no obvious signs of trauma, was taken to Tallahassee Memorial HealthCare, where he died a short time later.

According to the arrest report, Evans had given her child to a man who resides at the apartment because she was “unable to care for him due to her narcotics abuse.” The man, who was selling narcotics from his apartment, became the primary caregiver for the boy, who was “non-communicative and only partially potty-trained.”

The man, who had been caring for the child for two years, told police that the child appeared “tired” and was “wheezing” the night before his death, so he put the boy in a pull-up diaper and placed him in his bed to sleep. The man took a sleeping pill and went to bed himself.

The next morning, the man said he tried to awaken the boy, who was warm but “unresponsive.” In a panic, he asked a friend who was staying at the apartment to call 911.

Police asked the boy’s caregiver if the child ever had access to narcotics in the apartment. The man, who kept medications in bottles without child-proof locks, said “not from me” but acknowledged that he and the boy’s mother and the friend often got “high” together.

During a search of the apartment, police found narcotics, marijuana and a box on top of a bedside table that contained numerous plastic baggies, multiple scales and an empty bottle of oxycodone. They also found loose pills in the kitchen, a handgun under the mattress where the man and the little boy slept and numerous prescription medicine bottles plainly marked “not child resistant.”

Investigators asked if the boy could have gotten into the man’s “dope” accidentally.

“It could have been.” the man said. “Because ... if it was on me, I’m willing to take it, as a man, because I love this child.” When asked whether he did enough to protect the child, he said, “Obviously I didn’t.”

Police said that shortly after midnight on the day the child died, the boy’s mother texted the man at his apartment saying she wanted some “M,” code for “Molly” or MDMA. She sent the man $30 via a cash app and stopped by his place, though she later told police she didn’t interact with her son.

The child’s mother confirmed that she visited the apartment in the hours before her son died.

“Evans was aware her child was in his bedroom, and she could hear him snoring (although she described a sound consistent with wheezing),” the arrest report says. “Evans did not interact with her child and left the apartment, but stated she intended on returning during the daytime.”

Police called her the next morning to say her son was being taken to the hospital. After she arrived, investigators informed her that her son “did not survive.”

An autopsy found partially digested pills in the child’s stomach, according to the arrest report. Toxicology results showed the child “had ingested fentanyl and acetaminophen, which resulted in his death.”

“There is sufficient evidence to support that Evans was aware that (the man) maintained narcotics in, and sold narcotics from, the residence,” the arrest report says. “Despite her awareness that (he) was keeping and selling narcotics from the apartment, Evans elected to leave ... her 3-year-old child at (the man’s) residence and in (the man’s) care.”

No other charges have been filed in the case, according to court records. The woman was scheduled to have her first court appearance on Friday.

Contact Jeff Burlew at jburlew@tallahassee.com or 850-599-2180.

This article originally appeared on Tallahassee Democrat: Tallahassee police arrest mom after child dies from fentanyl overdose