Prepare yourself for some ridiculousness when you read the details of this story out of Palmetto, Georgia: Authorities are searching for a 34-year-old woman and her 22-year-old boyfriend after they allowed a 13-month-old boy to ingest cocaine while he was in their care.
The boy’s mother, 17, is not under suspicion, though she is described as a witness in the case. But Ebony Daniel, 34, and Charlie Martin, 22, are facing charges of possession of cocaine, cruelty to children in the first degree and reckless conduct, according to Sgt. Lee Gragg of the Palmetto Police Department.
The child was brought into Piedmont Newnan Hospital on Friday afternoon by his mother. When the hospital staffers found out what happened, they called in the police and they transported the child to Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta at Egleston, where he was admitted to the hospital for observation and tested positive for cocaine.
That night Palmetto police went to the boy’s home with a search warrant and “evidence was found and collected at the residence,” Gragg said.
The boy is doing well enough now that he was released from the hospital, though they are still awaiting toxicology reports to determine how much cocaine he ingested.
Our job here is not to pass judgment on the teenage mother or the 34-year-old grandmother, who clearly was herself a teen mother 17 years ago, or even the 22-year-old boyfriend of the grandmother. There will be plenty of judgment passed on them when they are sitting in a courtroom in front of a judge. But perhaps we might suggest that the 17-year-old mom use this as a wake-up call to find a higher grade of baby sitter in the future—baby sitters with no drugs in the house. And as for grandma—probably one of the few grandmas in the country with a boyfriend who just recently passed the legal drinking age—consider yourself lucky that the baby made it back home safely. Grandmas are supposed to be safe havens for little ones. We think you have some work to do, grandma.
