43
YPD: Boy, 9, died of cocaine overdose
By Joe Gorman
YOUNGSTOWN
Now that police know how a 9-year-old city boy died late last year, they are investigating the circumstances that led to his death.
Detectives said the amount of cocaine found in Marcus Lee, a student at McGuffey Elementary School, who died the day after Christmas, was “off the charts.”
Police said the Mahoning County Coroner’s office ruled Marcus’ death as accidental, but police are investigating it as a homicide, after receiving toxicology reports from the Cuyahoga County Coroner’s office where an autopsy was performed two days after he died.
The toxicology results were not finalized until May 1, police Lt. Doug Bobovnyik said at a news briefing Monday.
Marcus died on the afternoon of Dec. 26 at Akron Children’s Hospital Mahoning Valley in Boardman, where he was taken by his mother and her boyfriend after he began having seizures.
“Right now, we definitely want justice for Marcus – that’s really it right now,” Lakeshia Lee, Marcus’ stepmother, said Monday night. “Like I said, we really don’t have much to say other than that.”
A police report from Dec. 26 said a doctor told an officer, who was called, that Marcus’ mother said he had swallowed bleach. But doctors detected no odor of bleach while trying to save his life.
Bobovnyik said a urine screen done on Marcus at the hospital detected drugs. But because Marcus was on medication at the time, it was unclear if those drugs had anything to do with his death, so a full toxicology screen was done.
The autopsy was performed in Cuyahoga County because former Mahoning County forsenic pathologist Dr. Joseph Ohr, who has since died, was on vacation that week.
Bobovnyik said the Midland Avenue home of Marcus’ mother was searched the day Marcus died after she gave permission. Police found nothing there, Bobovnyik said.
“There was no cocaine in the house,” Bobovnyik said.
Bobovnyik said investigators believe Marcus ingested the cocaine because the drug was found in his stomach. He said Marcus ingested so much he would have become ill right away.
“The result of the overdose occurred almost immediately,” Bobovnyik said.
Marcus was taken to the hospital by ambulance, and police were not called until after Marcus died at the hospital, Bobovnyik said.
Bobovnyik said even though a cause of death was not known right away, detectives handled the case as a suspicious death.
The mother, her boyfriend and a third person were all interviewed by detectives – the mother and boyfriend the day Marcus died. Bobovnyik said detectives can no longer speak to the mother, however, because she has retained a lawyer.
At the time of his death, Marcus’ mother, Raenell Allen, was an educational assistant at McGuffey Elementary. A spokeswoman for the board of education said Allen has been on leave through the Family Medical Leave Act since the beginning of the month.
The mother has two other children, but they have since been removed from her home by Mahoning County Children Services, Bobovnyik said.
Detectives have been in contact with the county prosecutor’s office since they received the results of the coroner’s report, and most likely, the case will be presented to a grand jury, Bobovnyik said.
Last year, a Warren woman was sentenced to 30 months in prison after her two children, age 9 months and 21 months at the time, ingested opiates at a home in which she was staying and where drugs were being sold. The children were revived at Trumbull Memorial Hospital with the opiate antidote naloxone.
In March, again in Warren, a 9-month-old child was treated at Trumbull Memorial and later at the Akron Children’s Hospital main campus after she had ingested an opiate, probably heroin, authorities said. Charges have yet to be filed in that case.
Jennifer Kollar, a Children Services spokeswoman, said caseworkers are seeing more and more cases this year where drug use by an adult affects children in their care.
Kollar said workers are now seeing cases where children are exposed to needles adults leave behind and drugs they leave lying around, and instances where children are brought along when the adults who are caring for them are buying drugs.
She said there also is an increase in children seeing adults using drugs and overdosing in front of them, and more children are calling 911 when that happens.
Kollar said caseworkers try to find a friend or family member who can care for the children if Children Services gets involved, and they also try to refer adults for treatment so they can get off drugs and be able to care for their children.