Baby girl's death from drug intoxication leads to woman's arrest on aggravated manslaughter charge
BOYNTON BEACH — A 32-year-old woman is facing a charge of aggravated manslaughter of a child following the death of a baby girl in March.
Boynton Beach police arrested Kelly Ann Kirwan this week, alleging that a child under her care died from ingesting drugs. A police report indicates that Kirwan has addresses both in Boynton Beach and in New Jersey.
The report did not specify her relationship to the child. According to the report, the child died in April and the Palm Beach County medical examiner ruled that the death was a homicide.
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During a hearing Wednesday at the Palm Beach County Jail, Circuit Judge Kirk Volker ordered that Kirwan be held on $300,000 bond, that she be fitted with an ankle monitor upon her release and that she have no contact with children.
Kirwan remained in custody as of Thursday afternoon, jail records show. The attorney who represented Kirwan in court declined a request for comment.
Investigators say an ambulance crew rushed the 10-month-old to Bethesda East Hospital on the night of March 31 after Kirwan called 911. Doctors later transferred the child to Joe DiMaggio Children's Hospital in Hollywood, where she died.
Cause of baby's death was intoxication of fluorofentanyl and fentanyl
Prior to the 911 call, Kirwan was driving to a Target store in suburban Boynton Beach to buy baby formula, with the child in a car seat, according to the arrest report. While Kirwan was on a video call, the person on the other end saw the child making strange noises and slumped over and told Kirwan to pull over and call for help.
The medical staff at Bethesda told law enforcement the child had suffered cardiac arrest as a result of alcohol toxicity. The police report said the cause of death was intoxication of fluorofentanyl and fentanyl due to the ingestion of illicit narcotics.
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Investigators said the drugs were stored in an unsafe manner.
Detectives at the apartment where the child was being cared for saw pain pills on a couch, several prescription pill bottles throughout the apartment, a bar containing alcohol and an empty capsule of suspected drugs inside a bedroom, the arrest report said..
They also saw a baby pacifier and a pump nasal spray on the bed near where the capsule was recovered, police said.
The 10-month-old is one of the county's youngest homicide victims in 2022. Days after her death, a 16-month-old boy in West Palm Beach was fatally wounded when someone fired shots into a vehicle where the child was seated with his mother and father.
Julius Whigham II is a criminal justice and public safety reporter for The Palm Beach Post. You can reach him at jwhigham@pbpost.com and follow him on Twitter at @JuliusWhigham. Help support our work: Subscribe today.
This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: Boynton woman faces charge after baby dies of drug intoxication