A mother discovered her baby had meth in his system after picking him up from a day care in Yazoo City, Mississippi.
When Marla Demita walked into Little Blessings Daycare on May 20, she could hear Dean, then 9 months old, screaming and crying, Mississippi Today reported Tuesday.
Demita knew something was wrong the moment she saw her son.
“It’s like he looked straight through me, like he didn’t know who I was,” she said.
The baby’s screams continued that night.
“And I’m not talking about fussy crying. I’m talking about blood curling screams,” Demita said. “It was one of the worst things I’ve ever seen.”
Demita and her husband, Johnathon, drove the baby to the Children’s of Mississippi hospital in Jackson, Mississippi, where doctors ran a number of diagnostics, including a drug test.
A week later, the parents learned the baby tested positive for methamphetamine.
Not only that, but Dean had ingested the drug on May 20, between noon and 4:00 p.m. — the same time he was at the day care.
Should this day care be shuttered?
The Mississippi Department of Health fined Little Blessings $50 after its director, Lisa Martin, didn’t report the incident.
But the agency couldn’t verify that Dean had been exposed to the meth while at the day care.
Martin told the health department that Dean’s exposure to meth may have been residue from some visitor’s shoe.
Going forward, Martin said she would require anyone entering the day care’s infant area to wear shoe coverings.
Adding to the day care’s culpability, however, police learned the facility didn’t have cameras in its rooms.
And in recent years, the Mississippi Department of Health had received abuse complaints against the day care.
One complaint alleged that the employees would lock the children in dark rooms.
“They hit children on the hands and butts and grab them very roughly,” a former Little Blessings employee said in a 2023 complaint to the Mississippi Department of Health.
The health department and police are still investigating the meth incident.
In the meantime, Demita brings her son to work.
“I’m taking it day by day,” Demita said. “I know he won’t be going back to a day care.”
Demita’s story isn’t the only instance of children being exposed to meth at a day care.
In December 2024, a Minnesota day care temporarily shut down after a 3-year-old boy ingested methamphetamine, according to KMSP-TV in St. Paul, Minnesota.
In a 2023 incident, a Missouri day care director lost her job because she allegedly was in possession of meth, according to KTVI-TV in St. Louis.
Investigators reportedly found the methamphetamine in the director’s purse and in the infant room of the day care.
“It’s sickening, the world that we’re in. You put trust and faith in somebody to care for your child,” Randi Briggs, a mom, said.
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