A four-year-old boy died after ingesting methadone. Now the parents are charged with grossly causing the death of another.
Despite the boy showing serious symptoms, the medical service was not alerted in time, according to the indictment.
“The crime is serious as they kept the methadone accessible to children in the home,” writes the prosecutor.
It was at the end of January that a four-year-old boy in Umeå died after ingesting the narcotic preparation Methadone. Now the parents are charged at the Umeå district court, suspected of causing the death of another, and drug offences.
The prosecutor is also demanding that the parents be deported from Sweden.
According to the indictment, the parents should not have contacted the healthcare system in time. This despite the boy showing serious symptoms such as breathing problems, locked jaws and low body temperature.
Searched on Google
A review of the mother’s mobile phone shows that she searched for “children who sleep, get cold and grind their teeth” early in the morning.
It is unclear how the child ingested the pain-relieving and narcotic-classified substance, which is used, among other things, in connection with the detoxification of drug addicts. But an autopsy shows that the boy had large amounts of methadone in both his blood and urine.
“Serious crime”
Prosecutor Petra Hedberg believes that the crime is serious as the parents kept methadone accessible to children in the home. She believes that the guardians had an obligation to “protect and take care” of the boy.
“Both the storage and handling of the methadone, as well as the failure to promptly contact medical care, has been a deliberate risk-taking of a serious kind, which caused the boy’s death,” writes prosecutor Petra Hedberg.
The parents deny any wrongdoing.
During questioning, the parents state that the child was “alert and healthy” during the evening, but that he was a little coughy and snotty. The mother therefore gave the boy some cough medicine before they went to bed.