Originally published on Hartford Courant
An Oxford woman has been charged with second-degree manslaughter in the death of her toddler after fentanyl, morphine and cocaine were found in the little boy’s blood, state police said.
Rebecca J. Dixon, 35, was arrested Tuesday, they said. She was arraigned in Superior Court in Milford, where her bail was reduced from $100,000 to $75,000. She remains in custody at York Correctional Institution.
According to an arrest warrant affidavit, Dixon called 911 shortly before 2 p.m. July 6 and reported that her baby, who was almost 1, wasn’t breathing. The toddler was taken to Griffin Hospital in Derby, where he was pronounced dead. State police did not release the boy’s name, saying he was the victim of domestic violence.
Dixon’s mother told police her daughter had called in sick to work July 6 because she had stayed up late the night before and because the boy was fussy and cranky when he woke up. Although Dixon and her husband usually slept in a different bedroom than the child, Dixon took the baby into her room with her that morning and they stayed there into the afternoon, the warrant said.
Dixon told investigators her baby remained fussy but finally fell asleep around 12:30 p.m., face down in the crook of her elbow ― although in a later interview she said he was face up, the warrant said. She fell asleep as well, and when she woke up, he was not moving and felt limp, she told them.
When detectives processed the scene, they found evidence of recent illegal drug use that included empty plastic baggies, a homemade glass smoking pipe and empty glassine envelopes for heroin in nightstand drawers, according to the warrant. They also found a hollow tube from a pen, often used to ingest narcotics, on top of the nightstand, which was next to the bed.
Asked about the drug paraphernalia, Dixon admitted that she and her husband both use heroin. She said she snorted the drug the night before her son died, although she said she did not take any the morning of his death, according to the warrant. It has been some time since she used cocaine, she said.
Dixon told police she didn’t think her son would have come into contact with any heroin, the warrant said, because “they both were careful about their use.”
She also told investigators that while her baby wasn’t able to walk yet, he could “shimmy off of the bed and use objects, like the nightstand to lower himself and hold on to,” the warrant said.
Her husband told investigators that while he used narcotics on a bathroom window sill, Dixon used it “mostly in the bedroom on the nightstand, and would store the heroin in her bra,” the warrant said.
In September, investigators learned that Dixon, who wasn’t breastfeeding the child, had six different controlled substances in her blood, according to the warrant.
Police also found out exactly how her son died. He died of “acute intoxication due to the combined effects of fentanyl and morphine, with recent cocaine exposure,” it said. The state’s chief medical examiner, Dr. James R. Gill, classified the toddler’s death a homicide.
A review of the baby’s medical records showed that he was exposed to opioids in the womb and had experienced withdrawal symptoms when he was born, the warrant said.
Fentanyl is an extremely powerful synthetic opioid painkiller that is similar to morphine, but 50-100 times more potent, according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse.
The baby would have turned 1 on July 29.
