FAYETTE COUNTY, Pa. — A young girl is lucky to be alive after police said she got ahold of fentanyl inside her Fayette County home and overdosed.
It happened last year when she was just 1 year old, but troopers said the investigation stalled because of lies the parents told.
“The parents -- the mother and father -- ended up lying throughout this investigation of where the child was exposed it. It did happen at their residence. Initially they said it was Bailey park in Uniontown,” Trooper Kalee Barnhart said.
Police said the toddler’s overdose happened inside their Franklin Avenue home in South Union Township.
Gabrielle Arnold was charged last week, and the child’s father, Deondre Richardson, was just charged on Monday.
Troopers said the baby girl was unresponsive, limp and needed to be intubated last October.
She tested positive for fentanyl and had to be revived with naloxone, a drug that can reverse an opioid overdose.
“Additionally, the parents decided to wait before taking the child to the hospital, so that was a very big issue investigators found,” Barnhart said.
Richardson allegedly told police a friend dropped heroin inside his car and he brought into the house and forgot about it.
The girl is doing OK and remarkably recovered.
Both Richardson and Arnold are due in court next week.
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