A D.C. woman was charged Friday with first-degree murder in the 2022 death of her 3-year-old daughter, who authorities said ingested her mother’s Percocet that was laced with fentanyl and had been left on the bed where the child was napping.
Washington, D.C
Mother charged with murder in fentanyl death of 3-year-old in D.C.
In court documents, authorities described desperate attempts to save Journey after her mother, 27-year-old Sasha McCoy, rushed her out of an apartment building on Stanton Road after finding her unresponsive and turning purple.
A crowd quickly gathered, and several people called 911 as a bystander began CPR. A 911 operator heard someone screaming, “Come on, Sasha,” according to an arrest affidavit filed in court. Police and paramedics were dispatched at 4:47 p.m., as bystanders, McCoy and Journey piled into a vehicle and sped off to the hospital.
A doctor pronounced her dead at 5:09 p.m.
In addition to murder, McCoy was charged with cruelty to children. At a hearing Friday, a D.C. Superior Court magistrate judge ordered McCoy detained and set a court date for March 8. McCoy’s attorney, Elizabeth Weller, declined to comment when reached Saturday.
In the court documents, prosecutors allege that McCoy intentionally and recklessly engaged “in conduct which created a grave risk of bodily injury to Journey McCoy.”
A spokeswoman for the U.S. attorney’s office in D.C., which prosecutes adult felonies in the District, could not recall a previous case of a parent charged with murder in a child’s fentanyl overdose. Efforts to reach relatives of McCoy and Journey on Saturday were not successful.
Law enforcement authorities in the District and elsewhere have made targeting fentanyl a priority, noting the synthetic opioid is up to 100 times more powerful than morphine and up 50 times more potent than heroin. It is often used as a cheap filler hidden in other drugs.
Last year, D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) declared a public emergency over the opioid crisis, directing city agencies to track overdoses more efficiently and to help outreach teams reach those in need. Opioid overdose deaths last year far exceeded violent homicides in the District.
In 2022, a total of 19 people died in two separate mass casualty fentanyl overdoses in Northeast and Southwest Washington. Police made arrests in one of the incidents. Last year, police arrested more than a dozen people they linked to a cross-country fentanyl ring. They said that investigation began when a young mother in D.C. overdosed and died after taking a single Percocet pill laced with fentanyl.
The D.C. police department’s Special Victim Unit investigated Journey’s death. The initial autopsy, conducted the day after Journey died, revealed abrasions on Journey’s face that appeared to be from scratching, but no significant trauma. The autopsy report listed the cause her death as “pending.”
According to the arrest affidavit, McCoy told police at the hospital that she had fallen asleep in an apartment where she worked as a home health aide. She told police the man she cared for was bed-bound, but he was hospitalized at the time, the affidavit says. Two acquaintances disputed that McCoy had a job, according to the affidavit.
McCoy told police she had four children and, after taking a nap, she awoke to find two of them “messing” around in the refrigerator. She told police she checked on Sasha at least twice during her nap.
The final time she checked, McCoy told police she found Sasha in bed with “a lot of yellow mucus coming from her mouth, as if she was choking,” the affidavit says. She then rushed her daughter outside, and to the hospital.
Police said they returned with McCoy to the Stanton Road apartment. In the room where Sasha had been napping, police said in the affidavit, they found a queen-size bed with blue sheets and a burgundy blanket that had been pulled off the mattress. An open bag was on top of the bed with two round Percocet pills stamped “M” and half of an oval-shaped Xanax pill, according to the affidavit.
A child’s bottle was on the floor, along with a piece of oatmeal cake.
McCoy told police that she had seven Percocet pills, the affidavit says, although she wasn’t sure that was an accurate count. “When you’re used to taking them and having so many,” the affidavit quotes her as telling police, “you just pop’em, pop’em and pop’em.”
The mother then told police, according to the affidavit, that the pills police found on the bed are ones she may have dropped while picking up her unresponsive daughter. “I know how ya’all are gonna make it seems,” she told police, according to the affidavit. “It’s not how it seems. I dropped it right there when I picked my baby up.”
The affidavit says that toxicology tests revealed that two of the pills contained fentanyl. The D.C. medical examiner’s office eventually ruled that Journey had died of fentanyl intoxication.
The affidavit filed in Journey’s death says that investigators with D.C. Child Protective Services visited McCoy, who had four children, at least twice. In September 2020, the affidavit says, McCoy was alleged to have left two of her children alone when she left to smoke marijuana. The agency could not prove substance abuse but cited her for inadequate supervision, and, according to the affidavit, she agreed to not be under the influence of drugs while caring for her children.
In August 2021, the affidavit says, Child Protective Services referred McCoy to substance abuse treatment after a new baby was born going through withdrawal.
Keith L. Alexander contributed to this report.
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (WCTV) – Seventy-two veterans took a trip Saturday to our nation’s capital to visit memorials honoring their service in the armed forces.
This year marks the 12th trip to Washington, D.C. for Honor Flight Tallahassee.
Early Saturday morning, veterans and their guardians met to take a charter flight up to D.C.
Throughout the day, veterans were taken to the World War II memorial, as well as the Korean and Vietnam War memorials. The veterans also visited Arlington National Cemetery and the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.
More Tallahassee news:
The day ended with a wonderful welcome home celebration.
Our Jacob Murphey, Julia Miller, Taylor Viles, and Grace Temple accompanied the veterans, capturing moments from throughout the day.
The team will have live coverage from Washington, D.C. on Monday to share more from the day’s events.
We will continue to have coverage throughout the month of May, leading up to our Honor Flight special on Memorial Day.
To keep up with the latest news as it develops, follow WCTV on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Nextdoor and X (Twitter).
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4 things to know about the weather:
- Chances of rain in the morning
- Gusty Sunday
- Chilly Monday
- Temps will rise again through the work week
Download the NBC Washington app on iOS and Android to check the weather radar on the go.
After a nice and warm Saturday, changes arrive for part two of the weekend.
The first half of your Sunday will have a chance for showers. Winds will pick up with our next system and are expected to gust to about 20-30 mph. Cooler air will settle in, and lows Sunday night fall into the 40s.
Highs temps Monday will reach only into the mid to upper 50s.
However, temperatures will rise through the week, so you won’t need your jackets every day.
QuickCast
SUNDAY:
Showers, then partly cloudy
Wind: NW 10-15 mph
Gusts @ 30 mph
HIGH: Lower 60s
MONDAY:
Partly cloudy
Wind: NW 10-15 mph
Gusts @ 25 mph
HIGH: Upper 50s
Stay with Storm Team4 for the latest forecast. Download the NBC Washington app on iOS and Android to get severe weather alerts on your phone.
Washington, D.C
‘It’s a twilight zone’: Iran war casts deep shadows over IMF gathering in Washington
The most severe energy shock since the 1970s, the risk of a global recession and households everywhere stomaching a renewed surge in the cost of living – hitting the most vulnerable hardest.
In a sweltering hot Washington DC this week, the message at the International Monetary Fund meetings was chilling: things had been looking up for living standards around the world. But then came the Iran war.
“Some countries are in panic,” said the fund’s managing director, Kristalina Georgieva, addressing the finance ministers and central bank bosses in town for the IMF and World Bank spring meetings. “The sooner it [the Iran war] ends, the better for everybody.”
Such gatherings are not typically used to fight geopolitical battles. “You don’t get people shouting at one another at these things,” one senior figure remarked. But, as a record-breaking April heatwave swept the US capital, no one could ignore the mounting damage from the Iran war.
Those familiar with the mood over breakfast at a meeting of the G20’s representatives on Thursday, which included Donald Trump’s treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, and the outgoing US Federal Reserve chair, Jerome Powell – said the atmosphere in the room was sombre amid an open exchange of serious views.
“It is such a twilight-zone meeting,” said Mohamed El-Erian, a former IMF deputy managing director who is now chief economic adviser at the Allianz insurance group. “There are several shadows hanging over it: one is the shadow that comes from concern about the global economy as a whole.
“The second is that some countries are going to be particularly hard hit, and it’s mostly countries that very few people are talking about. But the third concern is the adding of insult to injury: the fact that the US, which started a war of choice, is going to be hit, but by a lot less than elsewhere in relative terms.”
Before Thursday’s breakfast, Rachel Reeves had started her day with an early-morning jog. Joined by her counterparts from Spain, Australia and New Zealand for a run down the iconic National Mall, she posted an Instagram selfie with a not-so-subtle dig: “Friends that run together – work together.”
A day earlier, the chancellor had told a CNBC conference that she thought “friends are allowed to disagree on things” as she criticised Trump’s Iran war as a “mistake” and a “folly” that had not made the world safer.
Speaking at a venue just steps away from the White House, before a one-on-one meeting with Bessent, she said this “fair message” was needed because UK families and businesses were feeling the pain from higher energy prices triggered by the conflict.
Those close to Reeves insist her meeting remained cordial. Britain and the US have significant shared interests in AI, financial services and trade. The chancellor also said the UK government had little time for the Iranian regime.
But with the IMF having warned on Tuesday that the Iran war could risk a global recession – in which Britain would be the biggest G7 casualty – it was clear Reeves had travelled to Washington ready to pick a fight.
“I’m struck by how vocal she has been and the words she used,” said one global financier. “We know the disagreement between Bessent and [European Central Bank president] Christine Lagarde earlier in the year. But that was in private.”
At a cocktail party held at the British ambassador’s residence for hundreds of diplomats and financiers – including the Bank of England’s governor, Andrew Bailey, the chief executive of Barclays, CS Venkatakrishnan, and dozens of senior figures – this transatlantic tension, weeks before King Charles’s US state visit, was a major topic of conversation.
The other, in the balmy residence gardens, was one of its former occupants, Peter Mandelson, as revelations about the former ambassador’s appointment threatened to further rock the UK government.
Before the war, the agenda for the IMF had been about global cooperation; the adoption of AI, jobs and work to eradicate poverty. Each of those tasks had now been complicated, but not least the task of countries working together.
For many at the meetings, the focus was on forging closer global cooperation without the world’s pre-eminent superpower.
“Everybody is talking about how you hedge against American decisions,” said David Miliband, the former UK foreign secretary, who now runs the International Rescue Committee. “You can’t do without them, because they’re 25% of the global economy. But, in a lot of fora, they’ve pulled out.
“So everyone has to think, how does one structure international cooperation? The old west is not coming back. And so everyone has to figure out how to position themselves for that world.”
For those gathering in Washington, there was irony in the fact that they were meeting in the halls of institutions founded, under US leadership, to promote global cooperation after the second world war. The whole idea of the Bretton Woods institutions was to avoid the dire economic conditions and warfare of the 1930s and 1940s. Yet this year’s meeting was taking place amid these intertwining problems.
In their conversations about the best economic policy response to the shock of conflict, the economists also knew the real power to make a difference lay two blocks across town from the IMF and the World Bank – behind the security cordons and construction equipment blocking the White House from public view. “It is not clear they can do anything about it,” said El-Erian.
Still, with a booming economy driven by AI – including Anthropic’s powerful Mythos model, the topic of much conversation – most countries cannot afford to completely break off US ties.
“People want to find ways to insulate themselves from the mess. But, on the other hand, they admire the US private sector,” El-Erian said. “The best way I’ve heard it put, is: they want to go long the private sector and short the mess. But it’s almost impossible to do.”
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