Hopewell Police say the seven children who overdosed on prescription medication will be OK
HOPEWELL — The seven young children who were overdosed on medication Wednesday at a city residence are expected to be OK, authorities said Thursday afternoon.
In the meantime, questions still remain if the children were left unattended at the time of the overdose as was originally reported. Police said the woman who lived at the address on South 16th Avenue told them there was another adult inside the house when she left to run an errand and came back to find four of the kids unresponsive, but police said they have been unable to confirm that the adult was in fact put in charge.
"We talked with the doctors, and they said all the children should make a full recovery," police Lt. Cheyenne Casale said. All seven children were rushed to John Randolph Medical Center first, then transported to two Richmond hospitals. Five of them went to Chippenham Medical Center, and the other two were taken to VCU Medical Center.
Of the seven children, four of them — ages 1, 2, 2 and 3 — were initially reported to be in critical condition.
Three of the seven children did not live at the 16th Avenue residence, Casale said. An acquaintance of the resident dropped them off there while she went to tend to business involving a death in the family.
The woman who lived there left to run an errand at a convenience store around the corner from the house. During that time, the 7-year-old, who Casale said was on medication for anxiety, began giving some of those pills to the other children. Casale said he did not know the brand of the anti-anxiety medicine because the label on the bottle appeared to be rubbed off.
It was not clear how long the woman was gone from the house, but Casale said when she returned, she discovered the kids had taken the pills.
"She claimed there was another adult in the house who was supposed to be watching them," Casale said. It was not known what that second adult was doing when the children took the pills.
When emergency crews arrived, they found four of the children breathing but unresponsive. The other three appeared to be coherent.
John Randolph issued a mass casualty incident, or MCI, which means that the hospital did not have enough medical staff on hand to accommodate all the needs of the children. A fleet of privately owned ambulances took the children from JRMC to the other hospitals.
The Progress-Index witnessed one of the children, a little boy, being wheeled from the JRMC emergency room to one of the ambulances. He was crying a little bit, but otherwise appeared to be awake and aware of his surroundings.
Casale said the investigation into the incident is ongoing. No decisions have been made concerning charges.
Hopewell's Child Protective Services is also looking into the case to determine where the children will go once they are discharged from the hospital, Casale said.
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Bill Atkinson (he/him/his) is daily news coach for USA TODAY's Southeast Region-Unified Central, which includes Virginia, West Virginia and central North Carolina. He is based in Petersburg, Virginia. Reach him at batkinson@progress-index.com.
This article originally appeared on The Progress-Index: Hopewell kids who OD'ed on medication will be OK, authorities say
