The mother of a 10-week-old baby who was killed by a lethal cocktail of drugs in her breast milk will not be jailed, after she struck a plea-deal with Pennsylvania prosecutors.
Samantha Jones, 31 had been charged with homicide after an autopsy found her baby died of a combination of methadone, methamphetamine, and amphetamine back in 2018.
According to the Courier, the judge said incarcerating Jones, who has taken steps to combat her drug addiction, would do little good. Grief and regret would provide the true penalty, he said.
Her attorney said that she was “strangled with grief and tortured by loss,” after the death of her son on April 2, 2018.
Jones, of New Britain, had been prescribed methadone to treat her addiction to painkillers, according to the district attorney in Bucks County.
According to the Courier, she had relapsed and begun to use illegal drugs.
She called her mother, who called 911 and began CPR, guided by the dispatcher.
Police arrived to find the baby in cardiac arrest. He was taken to the emergency room, where he was pronounced dead at around 9:30 a.m.
Jones told police that she had been primarily breast-feeding the baby, but had switched to formula three days earlier.
That night when the baby woke her for a feed at around 3 a.m., she told police she was too tired to prepare formula, so breast-fed him instead.
According to the Courier, the boy’s grandmother, Michele McGovern, told the court that she continues to be mystified by Jones’s actions that day.
“I keep replaying it in my head,” she said.
The same drugs that were later found in her son’s system were identified by a blood test, along with the anxiety medication clonazepam.
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