Boy, 4, takes crack to school
Preschooler now under foster care
By ERIC HANSON
Copyright 2002 Houston Chronicle
ANGLETON -- A 4-year-old boy took crack cocaine to his preschool class, possibly thinking it was candy, and officials are trying to determine where he got it.

Child welfare workers have placed the boy, who on Tuesday brought the drug to Early Childhood Campus in a prescription pill bottle, and his two younger siblings in foster care.

"This should be considered a very serious hazard," said Brazoria County District Attorney Jeri Yenne. "I would equate it to allowing a child access to a firearm."

"If this child or other children had ingested this, it could have led to an overdose or even death," Yenne said Wednesday.

More than a decade ago, a Brazoria County man received a life sentence after his 17-month-old son accidentally ingested cocaine and died, Yenne said.

In Tuesday's case, a teacher at Early Childhood Campus, which serves preschoolers in the Angleton Independent School District, noticed the boy showing the container to other children, said Estella Olguin, spokeswoman for Children's Protective Services.

"It is not clear if he even knew it was drugs. It is very possible he thought it was candy and he just picked it up and thought it looked neat and took it to school," Olguin said. Crack cocaine can look like rocks.

Olguin said the boy told authorities he brought the item from his home. She said the boy lives with his mother and stepfather along with a 3-year-old sister and 8-month-old sister. His father lives a few houses down the street.

Olguin said the parents denied owning the cocaine.

"We have three adults who have access to these three kids. All of the adults have been drug tested and we have turned over the results to the police," Olguin said.

She declined to release the results of the drug tests.

CPS removed the children from the home Tuesday night and will ask to have custody for at least 14 days.

During the next two weeks, child welfare workers and police will try to find out where the boy got the cocaine.

"He got it from somewhere and that is what we need to know before we can send them back," Olguin said.

No charges have been filed in the case.

Lynn Perryman, superintendent of the Angleton ISD, said school policy calls for all medications to be checked in at the nurse's office.

When the boy pulled the small brown bottle without a label from his pocket, the teacher immediately saw it, Perryman said.

"She took control of the bottle and noticed that it was not medicine. She did not know what it was, but took the bottle and the child to the nurse's office," Perryman said.

The school sent a letter to parents explaining what happened, Perryman said.

News that a preschooler had access to cocaine brought back memories for Yenne.

When she was an assistant district attorney, Yenne helped prosecute Robert Quinn Beaty, then 26, in the Sept. 28, 1987, death of his son, Robert Beaty.

According to court testimony, the toddler ingested the cocaine in his parents' bedroom, where Beaty was preparing to inject himself with the drug.

Autopsy results showed the baby died of a drug overdose. The boy had about a quarter teaspoon of cocaine in his stomach and had absorbed 30 milligrams of the drug into his blood.