Father arrested after 1-year-old overdoses from fentanyl exposure

BATON ROUGE – Deputies arrested a man after a 1-year-old suffered an overdose from fentanyl exposure.

The East Baton Rouge Sheriff’s Office says the incident happened on June 15.

Arrest records say the child was unresponsive when EMS brought her to the hospital. Technicians administered two doses of Narcan before transporting the child to another hospital. The child was placed in the pediatric intensive care unit for additional treatment before being discharged.

Blood tests confirmed the presence of Fentanyl and concluded the child suffered a fentanyl overdose.

Records say deputies interviewed the child’s mother, who told them she saw the child holding a small plastic bag while at their residence. Upon grabbing the bag, the mother noticed the bag had a white residue inside.

The mother asked her fiancée and the child’s father, 27-year-old Shaughnessy Johnson, about the contents of the bag. Johnson allegedly said the bag was empty.

About 15 minutes later, Johnson found the child wheezing and her eyes rolling to the back of her head.

When questioned by deputies, Johnson allegedly could not say where the bag was located, but that he thought he had “thrown the bag away.” He also said the bag contained three pills from “off the streets” that he had taken over a week before the incident.

Records say Johnson told deputies he threw the plastic bag in the trash. When the child was being transported from the first hospital to the second hospital, Johnson returned to the residence and threw the plastic bag into a dumpster in the complex’s parking lot.

Johnson told deputies he intentionally threw it away after deputies asked for it. Despite a search of the dumpster, deputies were unable to recover the bag.

Johnson was charged with second degree cruelty to juveniles, obstruction of justice and possession of drugs.