A police officer’s body-worn camera captured the scene in New York after authorities received a 911 call reporting an 11-month-old baby was unresponsive.
“He’s gasping,” the child’s mother explained to first responders as she cradled him in her arms in a Lake Grove home in January 2024.
As the baby struggled to breathe in an ambulance, first responders noticed the pupils of his eyes appeared to be small and “pinpoint” — a sign the baby may have ingested an opioid.
“I think we ought to do some Narcan just in case,” a first responder said.
The crew administered a dose of the opioid reversal drug, and soon noticed the child’s pupils were back to normal. After several tense minutes, the baby began to cry loudly. He survived after receiving more doses of Narcan in the hospital, where he was diagnosed with acute fentanyl poisoning.
Prosecutors said police found a straw containing fentanyl residue in the home. His father was convicted for the near-fatal overdose of his child and is awaiting sentencing later this month. Prosecutors said a dealer who sold the father drugs has also been sentenced to prison.
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This video is one of hundreds of police recordings and 911 calls following a young child’s fentanyl poisoning reviewed by Scripps News Investigates over the past two years.
The Scripps News review found caregivers often described similar symptoms, including children who were:
- Gasping, snoring, or experiencing “weird” breathing
- Acting lethargic, excessively tired, unresponsive
- Turning blue or purple
In these cases, young children were often reported to have inadvertently ingested fentanyl used by parents or caregivers by putting pills or items used to consume drugs like straws and foils in their mouths.
In many cases reviewed by Scripps News, first responders who recognized overdose symptoms in children quickly were able to save their lives.
Study finds sharp increase in non-fatal child fentanyl exposures
The Scripps review comes as researchers found nonfatal fentanyl exposures among children have spiked dramatically in recent years.
A study of poison control centers across the country, released earlier this month, found such exposures among children aged 0-12 grew from 37 cases in 2015 to 379 in 2023 — an increase of more than 900%.
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Joshua Black, a researcher at Rocky Mountain Poison and Drug Safety in Denver, helped conduct the study. He said non-fatal cases are also increasing in severity.
“We think that a consequence of that is that parents need to be much more aware and cognizant of the signs and symptoms that would indicate an overdose is occurring,” Black told Scripps News. “Those would be ... individuals becoming more pale, becoming unresponsive, in the worst cases, falling unconscious, [and] seizing.”
Caregivers describe ‘weird’ breathing
Across more than 110 hours of police video, interview recordings, and 911 audio, the Scripps News investigative team heard witnesses from around the country describing the symptoms that drove them to seek help for poisoned children.
Often, they described distinctive and unusual breathing.
In Florida, a couple told police the noises their baby made during a near-fatal overdose sounded like the child was having a bad dream at first.
“Like nightmares,” the mother said.
“It’s like a croak. I don’t know how to imitate it,” the father told officers.
In a separate case in Arizona, a woman described her nephew’s symptoms in a similar way.
“I realized he was breathing, like, really weird ... like in a snoring way, but heavy,” she said outside the hospital where the toddler received lifesaving treatment. “He was gasping for air.”
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In Ohio, a father described his child’s heavy breathing as “weird noises like I’ve never heard of.”
Police said first responders initially believed the child was suffering from croup — a sickness that can cause coughing and heavy breathing. As a result, they did not immediately administer the opioid reversal antidote, naloxone. The child survived after being treated in a hospital.
Separate research finds children without symptoms testing positive for fentanyl
A research project conducted by the child protection team at University of California Rady Children’s Hospital-San Diego found children who live in homes where fentanyl is being used or distributed are being exposed to the drug more often than previously known.
“It’s very scary for us because what we know is the line between life and death is probably very very small,” said Dr. Natalie Laub, a researcher and child abuse pediatrician at Rady Children’s Hospital-San Diego. “We don’t know how much fentanyl it takes for a child to stop breathing.”
Laub said the hospital added screening for fentanyl to its standard drug testing panel in 2020 and began to notice many children had fentanyl in their systems even when they displayed no symptoms.
“We began to see a dramatic rise in fentanyl-positive urine drug screens after that, notably in children who weren’t showing symptoms,” she told Scripps News. “When our team of researchers (including myself) looked at the data we were very alarmed.”
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According to Laub, her research team tested 102 children from homes where fentanyl was used or distributed and found more than 80% of the children had fentanyl in their systems — even those who showed no outward symptoms of fentanyl exposure.
“We believe this is only a small fraction of the children out there living in homes where there is illicit fentanyl use," she said. "Most children fly under the radar or aren’t tested because people don’t think it’s important to test well-appearing children when they are found in homes where fentanyl is being used."
“Way more children than we know are absolutely on the brink of death,” said Laub.
