Children’s ages: 2, 4 and 6 years.
A young couple in Washington is accused of injecting their three children with heroin for making them sleep quickly.
According to a report in the Huffington Post, Ashlee Hutt, 24, and her boyfriend Leeroy “Mac” McIver, 25, will remain behind bars though they were pleaded not guilty to charges of unlawful delivery of a controlled substance to a minor, second-degree criminal mistreatment and second-degree child assault.
The couple was arrested last year after neighbors contacted state Child Protective Services claiming they saw the 24-year-old Hutt inject her children with a dangerous drug.
The authorities removed the children aged 2, 4, and 6 from their home in Spanaway, Washington, after finding heroin, needles, and rat droppings on November 10 last year. The children have been in foster home since that.
The 6-year-old boy told the investigators that “his mom and dad give him and his sisters the ‘feel good medicine,'” which “he described as a white powder which was mixed with water,” and that his parents “used a needle to inject the ‘feel good medicine’ into him and his sisters.”
“Some of the statements they [the children] made were very disturbing about how they would get sleeping juice to go to sleep and it was injected into them by needle,” said Pierce County Sheriff’s Department spokesman Detective Ed Troyer.
There were injection marks and bruising on the skin of the children. The child also said that his parents had choked him and siblings more than one time. The boy and his sisters fell asleep immediately after receiving the drug.
After taking a drug test, the two-year-old and the four-year-old tested positive for heroin, while the six-year-old tested negative. But, in the case of the four-year-old, the level was too low.
The couple has admitted that they use heroin.