Surveillance footage taken in Ohio shows a mother shooting heroin in an alley as her son looked on.
Lauren Story, 29, of Green Township, is facing charges after police said that she was seen injecting the drug with a syringe along with a male friend, Fox19 reported.
Her 4-year-old son sat in front of them and was on his smartphone.
The video was uploaded to WLTV’s Facebook page.
John Donaldson of Grant Park Block Watch shot the clip. “I saw the little boy sitting there against the wall really behaving himself while the two were preparing to shoot up,” Donaldson told the station.
“I think the people [who live here] are solid people,” he said. “The people that are the problem are the people that come down here and sell their dope and the people that come down here and buy their dope.”
He then showed the clip to police, who arrested Story on Thursday.
They found four syringes in her purse and took her into custody.
“People have sympathy for people who use heroin but that sympathy ends when you’re doing it in front of your children,” prosecutor Dave Wood said, WLWT-TV reported.
America’s heroin epidemic shows no sign of slowing, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
It says:
- Heroin-related overdose deaths have more than quadrupled since 2010.
- From 2014 to 2015, heroin overdose death rates increased by 20.6%, with nearly 13,000 people dying in 2015.
- In 2015, males aged 25-44 had the highest heroin death rate at 13.2 per 100,000, which was an increase of 22.2% from 2014.
The CDC says that misuse of prescription opioids is the strongest risk factor for heroin use.
The agency says:
- More than nine in 10 people who used heroin also used at least one other drug.
- Among new heroin users, approximately three out of four report having abused prescription opioids prior to using heroin.
- Increased availability, relatively low price (compared to prescription opioids), and high purity of heroin in the U.S. also have been identified as possible factors in the rising rate of heroin use.
