Boy found gasping for air after overdosing on fentanyl on fourth birthday

14 January 2024 , 13:40

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Mum Alexis Scarborough has already appeared in court (Image: WLWT)

A couple who allegedly allowed their young son to get access to a highly dangerous drug and then overdose have been charged with child endangerment.

The four-year-old took the drug Fentanyl on his birthday and was then found gasping for air during a nap at his father's Golf Manor, Ohio, home on November 25. He was rushed to the Cincinnati Children's Medical Centre following the incident.

Dad Denard Bishop, 39, was arrested on Thursday while mum Alexis Scarborough, 34, was taken into custody immediately. The boy was found agonal breathing – a near-death condition where a person gasps for air because they are not getting enough oxygen – during his nap, police said.

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Denard Bishop and Alexis Scarborough have been arrested

Scarborough had come to the house for her son’s birthday when the overdose occurred, according to police. Bishop was not apprehended for two days. The mother pleaded not guilty to child endangerment during a hearing on Wednesday, but a judge rejected a request from her lawyers that she be released so she could keep her job as a hotel housekeeper.

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Her bond was set at £7,800 ($10K) and she was told she must not have any contact with her children unless given permission. Hamilton County Addiction Response Coalition Co-Chair Chief Tom Synan told Fox19 Now: "Fortunately, hopefully, this child will be okay. Luckily, they got medical attention. It is something that in some cases you can reverse.

"And hopefully, there's no further impact and the child and everyone in this incident learns from it and is able to take those safeguards and get the help and the resources they need so that they're not using drugs anymore."

Fentanyl is behind the vast majority of unintentional drug overdose deaths, according to the Ohio Department of Health's most recent statistics with 4,915 in 2022 and 81 per cent of those involving fentanyl – often in combination with other drugs. The shocking incident follows the death of a one-year-old from a suspected drug overdose at a nursery in New York in September last year with three other children taken to hospital.

Nicholas Feliz-Dominici died after inhaling fentanyl at the nursery operated by Grei Mendez. Fentanyl was found under a mat used by the children for napping, police said.

The synthetic painkiller, 50 times more powerful than heroin, has been blamed for a rise in US drug deaths. An NYPD spokesperson said three children were revived with Narcan, an overdose-reversing drug, after police were called to the Divino Nino nursery in the Bronx. One kilo of fentanyl was discovered "underneath a mat where the children had been sleeping earlier", said NYPD chief detective Joseph Kenny.

Paul Donald