TOOELE, Utah – Utah police arrested three relatives after a 3-year-old tested positive at the hospital for methamphetamine, according to KSTU.
The child’s mother, 30-year-old Lucinda Black, along with 23-year-old Danie Black and 27-year-old Ashley Black, were all booked into the Tooele County Detention center after allegedly exposing the toddler to the drug.
Officers were contacted Dec. 30 by a Mountain West Medical Center ER employee in Tooele City reporting that a child had just arrived with meth in her system, according to a probable cause statement.
The child’s legal guardian, her grandmother, told police that the girl had begun to act strangely. When the grandmother asked her daughter and son, the girl’s aunt and uncle, what was wrong, they stated that the child started acting “weird,” after she drank from a water bottle with soda in it.
Based on the information given at the hospital, detectives were called. Danie Black, the uncle of the victim, was detained at the scene of the incident after police say he admitted to recently using meth.
“After reading Danie his Miranda rights and him agreeing to talking to me, he stated that his sisters, Lucinda and Ashley Black, gave him meth and that the bottle belonged to Lucinda or Ashley and that Lucinda and Ashley would always mix him drinks with meth in them,” police said.
Based on Danie’s statement, police determined that the child may have consumed meth from the water bottle. Ashley and Lucinda Black were called to the station to speak with police.
“After talking to all three subjects, they all tried to deceive me and blame it on each other,” Detective Lydon Allred, with the Grantsville City Police Department, said. He also stated:
“I was able to show that Ashley gave the meth to Lucinda and that Lucinda put it in a bottle, which she took to her mothers where the 3-year-old consumed the meth by accident. I also learned that at one point, Danie had taken what was left in the bottle and took it to the bathroom to consume the meth. Through out my interviews with Danie, I found him lying several times. Danie did state he used meth and would do it in the house where the children lived. Both Ashley and Lucinda stated that they were all doing meth the night the child was exposed to the meth. Due to the facts in this case, Danie was transported to the Tooele County Detention Center and charged with Child abuse and felony child endangerment.”
Police stated that Lucinda Black was also arrested for felony child endangerment and abuse. It was unclear in the probable cause statement whether or not Ashley Black was also facing charges.