Alex Thomas
Police in Grantsville City, Utah, arrested three family members after a 3-year-old girl in their care tested positive for methamphetamine.
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Officers were contacted by an emergency room on Dec. 30, where physicians said that a toddler had recently arrived with meth in her system. The child’s grandmother told police that she had been acting strangely. The girl’s aunt and uncle told her grandmother that the child drank from a water bottle with soda in it, KSTU reports. When police showed up, the uncle, 23-year-old Danie Black, reportedly told the cops that he had recently used meth.
Authorities said, “After reading Danie his Miranda rights and him agreeing to talking to me, he stated that his sisters, Lucinda and Ashley Black, gave him meth and that the bottle belonged to Lucinda or Ashley and that Lucinda and Ashley would always mix him drinks with meth in them.”
Lucinda Black, 30, and Ashley Black, 27, were both called to the police station to talk with officers, and a detective said that they each tried to blame it on the other. Detective Lydon Allred of the Grantsville Police Department said:
I was able to show that Ashley gave the meth to Lucinda and that Lucinda put it in a bottle, which she took to her mother’s, where the 3-year-old consumed the meth by accident. I also learned that at one point, Danie had taken what was left in the bottle and took it to the bathroom to consume the meth. Throughout my interviews with Danie, I found him lying several times. Danie did state he used meth and would do it in the house where the children lived. Both Ashley and Lucinda stated that they were all doing meth the night the child was exposed to the meth. Due to the facts in this case, Danie was transported to the Tooele County Detention Center and charged with child abuse and felony child endangerment.
Lucinda Black was also arrested on charges of felony child endangerment and abuse. According to Utah law firm Canyons Law Group, the punishment for a third-degree child endangerment conviction can be up to five years in prison. If prosecutors choose to pursue a second-degree felony, a guilty verdict could yield 15 years behind bars.
It was not reported whether Ashley Black is facing charges.
