Disclaimer: All persons are presumed innocent until proven guilty.
ST. BERNARD PARISH (WGNO) — A St. Bernard Parish couple was taken into custody nearly three months after detectives say they swiped their two-year-old son from a New Orleans hospital after the child suffered from a cocaine overdose.
On Jan. 30, just before 11 p.m. members of the St. Bernard Parish Sheriff’s Office Field Operations Bureau were alerted to the call of a 2-year-old child at Children’s Hospital in New Orleans who had tested positive for having cocaine in his system.
The hospital suspected the child overdosed and was intubated and admitted to the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit, according to Sheriff James Pohlmann. Deputies say on Feb. 2, the parents 37-year-old Arianne Stechmann, and 31-year-old Johnathan Kritzman left the hospital and the city with the child.
The Louisiana Department of Children and Family Services was granted emergency custody and arrest warrants were issued for the two.
With the help of the U.S. Marshals Service Gulf Coast Regional Fugitive Task Force in Gulfport, Mississippi, the U.S. Marshals Service New Orleans Task Force and the LA Department of Child and Family Services, Stechmann, and Kritzman were arrested and booked Tuesday (April 4), into Mississippi’s Hancock County Jail.
Stechmann and Kritzman were located in Mississippi with the child who was found to be in good health. He was placed in the custody of the LA Department of Child and Family Services.
The couple is awaiting extradition to St. Bernard Parish where they will face charges of obstruction of justice.
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