A Virginia mother has been charged with the murder of her four-year-old son after he died from ingesting a “large amount” of THC gummies, authorities announced.
Dorothy Annette Clements, 30, of Spotsyvania was taken into police custody on Thursday and jailed after police said that the mother failed to get her son medical help soon enough. She has been charged with felony murder and felony child neglect.
On May 6, Clements’ four-year-old suffered a medical emergency at a home they were visiting in Fredericksburg, a nearby town. The boy died two days later and detectives from the Child Victims Unit learned from doctors that high levels of THC, the ingredient in cannabis that gets you high, were to blame for his death.
“The child’s toxicity level showed a high level of THC (tetrahydrocannabinol),” reads a news release from the Spotsyvania Sheriff’s Office. “The attending doctor told detectives that if medical intervention occurred shortly after ingestion, it could have prevented death.”
Clements reportedly told police she called poison control after her son ate half a gummy with CBD, a non-psychoactive ingredient in cannabis, and that they told her he would be okay.
But police say that “statements made to detectives by the mother did not match evidence seized at the home.”
NBC Washington reported that police found an empty THC gummy jar in the house where the boy was found.
Clements is currently behind bars at the Rappahannock Regional Jail under no bond. She faces up to 40 years in prison for the felony charges.
According to the Ontario Poison Centre, which is operated by SickKids, hospitals are seeing an increase in children unintentionally eating edible cannabis products and requiring medical treatment.
The organization found that in some of the cases, the cannabis edibles were “unregulated, looked almost identical to popular brands of candy, and contained many more milligrams of THC than approved by Health Canada.”
The Poison Centre says that any amount of cannabis consumed by a child can cause serious harm.