A Delaware preschooler brought nearly 250 bags of heroin to a daycare before nursery school, mistaking the deadly drug for candy.
The incident occurred when the young girl was provided the wrong backpack on her way to the Hickory Tree Child Care Center in Selbyville, Delaware. When she got there, the child started handing them out to students, believing them to be small gifts of temporary tattoos and a sweet treat.
Ashley Tull, the mother of the young child, handed the backpack containing the heroin to her child after the youngster's had been destroyed by a family pet.
Medics and the Delaware State Police were called into the nursery school after the small bags were discovered in the hands of students, and emergency services were contacted.
The 30-year-old parent was charged with possession of drugs and child endangerment.
The defendant's sister told the Associated Press that the defendant does not use or sell drugs, and had no idea the backpack she handed to her child contained heroin. She claims a person staying in the house may have stashed the drugs in the backpack without the knowledge of Tull.
The nursery school is located in the Delaware State Housing Authority's Hickory Tree Apartments. When Alisa Johnson, director of the school saw the youngsters passing something out to students, she believed they were temporary tattoos. The facility has a policy forbidding items from the outside in the classroom, and children were asked to put the bags in their pockets. Another employee later recognized the substance, and staff searched children's pockets, collecting all the packets of powder. These were placed into a larger bag, and brought to police.
"I said to them, 'can you tell me what this is?'" Police recognized the substance, and performed a field test. They told Johnson she was not to blame over the incident.
"You wouldn't have known. It looked like sugar," police told the woman.
A pair of children who came into contact with the drug were sent to local hospitals, but were released without incident. Despite believing the powder was candy, none of the children ate any of the narcotic.
Johnson contacted parents of all the students, asking if they wished to come pick up their children. After asking if their children were safe, most parents chose to leave the children at the school.
If the packets were not identified in time, the child could have brought the packages to her nursery school, passing them out there. The girl had recently attended a birthday party at her house where small bags of temporary tattoos and candy were passed out, and she believed the packets of heroin were a similar favor.
