Addiction Killed Baby, Charge Finds

Fri., Aug. 1, 1997

Associated Press

A woman was charged with murder after police said her breast milk was so full of heroin and methadone that it killed her 7-week-old daughter.

The father was also charged with murder for not intervening.

“It’s true with any form of child abuse that it’s preventable, but this one seems to be more preventable. It seems to be more of a conscious choice,” Tucson Police Detective Sgt. Brett Klein said Thursday.

Doctors put Eve Powell into the intensive care unit after she was born on May 16 because she was dependent on methadone, the opium-based drug given to help wean heroin addicts.

Before sending Eve home from the hospital a month later, medical workers warned the baby’s 24-year-old mother, Amoret Powell, that resuming her heroin habit while breast-feeding could kill the baby.

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Addiction Killed Baby, Charge Finds

Jesse Tinsley

Jim Meehan

Molly Quinn

Rob Curley

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