Angel Luis Gonzalez, 46, faces risk of injury to a child charges after police say his daughter appears to have put pills that he owned, in her mouth.
Police say they were alerted to the situation Tuesday when a doctor from Connecticut Children’s reported the situation saying they were treating a child who appeared to have overdosed.
According to the arrest report, the baby’s mother, Jessica Gonzalez, told police she left the child in a bedroom with her husband. When she came back, they were both asleep. She was able to wake her husband but not the child.
The mother told police she found a bag of blue pills. The bag and some of the pills were wet, as it they’d been in the child’s mouth.
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She and her husband Angel Gonzalez then drove the baby to Connecticut Children’s. Police say hospital officials were able to revive the child.
Investigators say Gonzalez had been arrested in 2017 for distribution of narcotics and was recently buying Percocet pills on the street. Percocet is one of the many types of pills that are often counterfeit.
Gonzalez is now being held on $200,000 bond. The Department of Children and Families has also been notified. They say they’ve created a safety plan where Gonzalez needs to find an alternate form of living and they say he has agreed.
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Fentanyl cases continue to be an issue here in the state. Reacting to this situation, some Hartford residents indicate this is symptomatic of a bigger problem.
“I think the fentanyl crisis in Hartford right now, it’s ridiculous,” Michael Vazquez said.
The little girl was revived at Connecticut Children’s using naloxone, otherwise known as Narcan. It’s an over-the-counter drug, the state’s Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services (DMHAS) says is critical to saving lives.
“Every year we lose way too many individuals to the overdose crisis, and it’s just very disheartening,” DMHAS Director of Opioid Services Luiza Barnat said.
Experts estimate that 85% of opioid-related deaths are connected to fentanyl. Authorities say fentanyl is 50 times more powerful than heroin and is found in a wide variety of street drugs, often times counterfeit prescriptions.
“They look like oxycontin. They look like Xanax. And people are using those unknowingly getting exposed to fentanyl,” Dr. J. Craig Allen, vice president of addiction services for Hartford HealthCare, said.
While the Hartford girl did survive, people there know the outcome could’ve been tragic.
“We have to do better,” Cherene Cotter said. “There’s just no excuse for it.”
