Five-year-old takes heroin to US day care centre
A five-year-old New York boy brought small packets of heroin to his day care centre and told other children it was sweets, police have said.
Six children were rushed by ambulance to a hospital and later released. The boy, his two-year-old sister and another two-year-old girl apparently swallowed some of the drug.
None were reported to have been seriously injured in the incident on Tuesday, The Buffalo News reported today.
The boy’s parents, Wayne Clamp and Kari Lyn Lee, said their son must have found the “10-pack” of heroin as his mother walked him and his two sisters to the YWCA Schoolhouse Commons centre.
Thinking he had found sweets, the boy gave it to his sisters and friends, the parents said.
“It was all wrapped up in waxed paper and they had smile faces stamped on them like these M&Ms,” Clamp said, showing a sweet wrapper.
“He didn’t think it was something bad,” Clamp said. “He said it smelled like breadcrumbs.”
The couple’s children and Lee’s seven-year-old son were taken into protective custody and placed with Lee’s mother pending a July 11 court date.
The parents said neither of them uses drugs and insisted the heroin did not come from their house.
Meanwhile, operations at the day care were suspended by the state Office of Child and Family Services, pending an investigation.
