Couple enter guilty pleas in boy’s cocaine overdose death

October 17, 2017 at 12:05a.m.

YOUNGSTOWN

Two people charged in the cocaine overdose of a 9-year-old boy the day after Christmas pleaded guilty Monday in Mahoning County Common Pleas Court.

Kevin Gamble pleaded guilty to charges of involuntary manslaughter and child endangering, and the child’s mother, Raenell Allen, pleaded guilty to a charge of child endangering.

Prosecutors are recommending a sentence of 41/2 years for Gamble and probation for Allen for the death of her son, Marcus Lee, of Midland Avenue, from a cocaine overdose.

Marcus died of a massive amount of cocaine that police said belonged to Gamble, Allen’s boyfriend, who was dealing drugs.

Gamble is set to be sentenced Nov. 30. Allen will be sentenced Dec. 5. The pleas headed off a trial that was scheduled to start Monday before Judge R. Scott Krichbaum.

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. 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.

Gamble had served a prison sentence after a conviction in Trumbull County Common Pleas Court on drug charges in 2003, but had not been in trouble since then. At the time of her son’s death, Allen was an educational assistant at McGuffey Elementary, where her son also attended.

Assistant Prosecutor Dawn Cantalamessa said authorities still have no idea how Marcus got his hands on the cocaine, but wherever he got it, he swallowed it and became instantly ill.

Police said the levels of cocaine found in Marcus by a toxicology screen were “off the charts.”