Woman charged after children hospitalized for suspected overdoses

A mother was arrested when two young children tested positive for opiates at the hospital after nearly dying, according to prosecutors.

Katrina Annette Lynch, 35, was charged with two counts of severe child abuse inflicting serious bodily injury after two children in her care, a 2 year old and an 18 month old, were found unresponsive and taken to the hospital, Assistant District Attorney Bill Stevenson said during Lynch's court appearance Wednesday.

One of the children tested positive for fentanyl, while the other child tested positive for an unknown opiate, Stevenson said.

Lynch admitted to police that she delayed taking the children to the hospital because she was scared, Stevenson said. She also told police the children had accessed prescription medication that they shouldn't have.

Judge John Greenlee set Lynch's bond at $500,000.

Lynch's husband, Raymond Johnson, said in an interview that the allegations are false.

"My wife is not guilty of these. It's just kids being kids, grabbing something they shouldn't have been. Basically, they took the wrong pills, and they had a reaction from it," he said. "It's just an accident."

He said that he was at work when it happened, but Lynch told him that the children accessed prescription sleeping pills that belonged to an older child, and that it was an accident.

The two children were taken to the hospital.

"They took both kids to the hospital, ran more tests there. It all just went downhill from there," he said. "A misunderstanding basically is what it is."

The couple's four children are in DSS custody, he said.

The children were hospitalized in January. Lynch was arrested Tuesday when she went to family court to try to get her children back.

"You can't even find alcohol in my house. There's nothing besides prescriptions my daughter is supposed to be taking," Johnson added.

District Attorney Travis Page said that the District Attorney's Office has seen five cases of parents allegedly exposing children to fentanyl in the last year, enough that he feels there is a trend.

"One of the things that we're seeing countywide, we're seeing some parents exposing their kids to fentanyl through their own drug use," Page said. "We've seen multiple circumstances of that."

Children being exposed to drugs is not a new problem, Page said. What is new is the potency of the drugs. Fentanyl is a powerful opiate that can be deadly in small quantities. Prosecutors are focusing their energies on using existing child protection laws in creative ways to incarcerate these people.

"I'm a father. I've got a 6 year old and a 5 year old myself," Page said. "I feel like parents have an obligation to protect their kids, and we take that obligation seriously. We're going to aggressively prosecute them. What we mean by that is, we're looking to send folks to prison for exposing kids to fentanyl."

There have been several recent convictions in instances where children were exposed to drugs.

In December of 2023, a woman was convicted of felony negligent child abuse inflicting serious bodily injury in a case where an 8-month-old baby overdosed on drugs. The baby was treated with Narcan, an overdose reversal drug, and multiple drugs, including fentanyl, were found on the bed where the baby was sleeping, according to prosecutors. The woman, Kayla Sanford, was sentenced to 23-40 months in prison.

On Jan. 24, 2024, two parents pleaded guilty to the same charge in a case in which their 1-year-old child was brought to the hospital. The child did not have a pulse, but medical workers were able to resuscitate the child. Toxicology results showed that the child was exposed to multiple drugs, including fentanyl and methamphetamine.

The parents, Jeffery Pickler and Heather Carver, were both imprisoned. Pickler was sentenced to 17-33 months and Carver was sentenced to 20-33 months. In November, a 24-year-old Gastonia woman was charged with second-degree murder and felony child abuse inflicting serious injury in the death of her 21-month-old daughter, Reign Marie Nelson, according to court records. Reign was found dead, lying on top of approximately 50 pressed fentanyl pills, Assistant District Attorney Kristen Northrup said.

This article originally appeared on The Gaston Gazette: Woman charged after children hospitalized for suspected overdoses