5 year old Smokes Crack

A former child-care worker is facing a child neglect charge after she helped her 5-year-old son smoke crack cocaine in her home, authorities said. Her son told an interviewer that he had taken his mother's "medicine" three times.

Andrea Wilkey, 40, 700 block of East 93rd Street, was arrested after the boy tested positive for crack cocaine on Aug. 7.

Marion County Prosecutor Carl Brizzi said the boy told his grandmother what he had done and she took him to St. Vincent Hospital. According to police, she told health care workers that her grandson was "acting funny." After a toxicology report revealed cocaine, a Child Protection Services caseworker was assigned to the case.

Brizzi termed the case horrendous.

"Sharing a crack pipe with your 5-year-old is no way to bond," he said.

The good news, he said, is that the boy appears to be OK. At the hospital, the boy was taken into custody and then released into his grandmother's temporary care.

Abstract:

This report describes a 10-month-old infant girl who died of cocaine poisoning. The infant was found apneic and in ventricular fibrillation after the parents summoned rescue personnel and claimed she had ingested rat poison. The parents later admitted that 2 hours before calling for assistance, the infant's 2-year-old brother was found eating "crack" cocaine and also feeding it to the infant. Investigators found "crack" cocaine throughout the house and in the infant's crib. At autopsy, the infant had two pieces of "crack" cocaine in the duodenum. The brain exhibited a markedly thinned corpus callosum. Toxicologic examination showed high concentrations of cocaine in the blood and in other specimens. The manner of death was classified as homicide because the infant was willfully placed in a hazardous environment with an easily accessible toxic substance, medical attention was deliberately delayed for 2 hours, and medical personnel were deceived when they were falsely told she had ingested rat poison. These features were thought to constitute neglect. The toxicologic characteristics of this case are unique. There are numerous reports of passive cocaine inhalation in infants and children less than 5 years of age, but ingestion of cocaine in this age group has rarely been documented. This age group also has no reported deaths due to cocaine ingestion and no cases of "crack" cocaine ingestion. The high concentrations of cocaine seen in this case, combined with the "crack" cocaine found in the duodenum, indicate ingestion as the route of exposure. The thinned corpus callosum in this case may be a consequence of intrauterine cocaine exposure.

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