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.