Three adults, including a mother, have been charged in connection with an Edmonton toddler’s death after toxicology results came back showing the child ingested opioids.
The 23-month-old boy died in September.
In a news release issued Thursday, police said on Friday Sept.15, 2023, around 1 p.m., the toddler’s 34-year-old mom allowed a 20-year-old female friend to look after her son.
Police allege that young woman took the boy for a walk near the family’s west Edmonton home.
Shortly afterwards, she noticed the child was displaying signs of medical distress.
She immediately returned to the home with the child, where the mother and her common-law partner, a 26-year-old man, were inside.
Over the next several hours, Edmonton police said the three adults reportedly made attempts to remedy the young boy’s medical distress through different means, but were unsuccessful. Police did not say what they did to try and improve his health.
At approximately 6:30 p.m., the mother and her friend took the boy to a nearby medical clinic, where a staff member noticed he was unresponsive and called 911.
EMS responded and transported the boy to hospital, where he was declared dead.
The medical examiner completed an autopsy later that week, which included toxicology testing that took several weeks for the results to come in.
On Thursday, Nov. 17, police received the toxicology results that confirmed the cause of death was an opioid overdose from carfentanil, fentanyl, and p-fluorofentanyl toxicity.
Carfentanil is a synthetic opioid that is 100 times more toxic than fentanyl and 5,000 times more potent than heroin.
The manner of death was confirmed to be accidental ingestion.
On Sunday, Dec. 11, police arrested and charged the mother’s 20-year-old friend with criminal negligence causing death.
On Wednesday, Dec. 27, the mom and her common-law partner (not the boy’s biological father) turned themselves in to police and were also each charged with one count of criminal negligence causing death.
Edmonton police said they were not naming the accused or dead boy involved in the investigation to protect the identity of other children in the family.