Brookline Parents Arrested After Baby Boy's Test Shows Exposure To Cocaine
PITTSBURGH (KDKA) - A baby boy is in Children's Hospital after a test showed he had been exposed to cocaine. His parents are in the Allegheny County Jail.
The house in Brookline is empty now. But inside on Wednesday, police detectives found heroin, used syringes and used crack pipes, which they say parents Matthew Bell and Lindsey Satterfield used often in arm's length of their boy.
According to a criminal complaint, Bell told police he and Satterfield would break up the crack cocaine with their hands and then handle the infant, who is now in Children's Hospital after a urinalysis found the presence of the drug.
Neighbors like Amy Stangrecki can't comprehend the choice of drugs over the safety of the child.
"What's so bad in this world that you need to turn to drugs? Your children, your babies are your first priority. Very sad," she said.
According to that criminal complaint, the baby was rushed to Children's after a visit to the child's pediatrician, who found him to be extremely malnourished and weighing a pound less than his previous appointment.
After admitting the baby at Children's, doctors detected the cocaine and a social worker contacted city detectives, who then searched the house, interviewed the parents and arrested them.
Fortunately, the child is recovering after exposure to the drug, unlike 4-year-old Avant Redding who died on May 7 after ingesting fentanyl in his father's apartment in Carnegie. The father, 36-year-old Van Redding, is in jail on manslaughter charges.
In Brookline, Stangrecki says the opioid epidemic has gotten out of hand.
"In the past, I'm going to say, five years, the drugs have gotten extremely, extremely bad. It's very sad to see our community being consumed by this," she said.
