For the second time in two months, the Department of Children and Families and the Flagler County Sheriff’s Office are investigating family members after a toddler is hospitalized on fears of ingesting narcotics.
The case in August involved a 1-year-old child in Daytona North, or the Mondex, where family members worried that the child had ingested methadone. The child was hospitalized and cleared. The latest case, taking place at 50 Black Bear Lane in Palm Coast, is more grave: the 18-month-old child is in an intensive care unit and appears to have overdosed on Subutex, strictly regulated a narcotic used in the treatment of individuals addicted to opioids.
The incident took place two days after the death of a 31-year-old man on Bruce Lane in Palm Coast that appear to be the result of an overdose, and again underscores the now routine recurrence of opioid overdoses in the county.
The 18-month-old boy was initially taken to Florida Hospital Flagler, then transferred to Florida Hospital Orlando, according to a sheriff’s incident report.
Sheriff’s deputies were contacted early this morning after Tara Cline, a DCF case worker was brought to the Orlando hospital. Tara told deputies that the story she was getting from the child’s mother, Megan Nichole Moss, “was not convincing and believed that information was not true,” according to the report.
According to Cline, Moss had told hospital authorities in Palm Coast that the boy “climbed onto a counter in the bathroom and had opened her medication and had chewed up on of her Subutex pills.” The DCF official told deputies she did not believe that an 18 month old infant could climb onto a counter and open a child-proof medicine container.
And in fact, the child had not done so.
Deputies took their investigation to the house on Black Bear, where they met with Lamitta Hess, 59, the long-time homeowner there and Moss’s mother. Hess said her boyfriend, 63-year-old Nicholas Thayer, and Moss had been replacing the car’s battery and washing the car when the child at some point got into a purse and took the medication.
Hess then said that she’d cooked dinner, everyone ate, and after Moss gave the boy a bath, decided to take him to the hospital because of his condition. Yet when a deputy spoke with Thayer, who lives on a boat docked in Daytona Beach, Thayer gave yet another story about how the child got his hands on the narcotic. He was at the house on Black Bear when Moss and her mother went to the store, leaving him to look after the children (the toddler was not the only child). Thayer went to the bathroom. When he came out, he noticed the child “chewing on something white and thought it might be candy.” He said there’d been no battery change in the car. Thayer later took Moss and the child to the hospital, he told a deputy.
Eventually, Moss told a deputy “she was scarred and that she wanted to tell the truth about what happened,” according to the report. She said she’d placed the children in the car with Thayer to go to a convenience store, and that as Thayer was pumping gas, she went into the store to get a drink. She then gave the boy a drink and didn’t see him with anything in his mouth at the time. But “when she got into the car she noticed [the child] chewing on a pill and noticed her pill bottle was out of her purse. [Moss] stated that there where only two pills in the bottle and believes that [the child] chewed them up and spit them out because she found pieces of the pills on the floor.”
Moss said Thayer had told her to make up the story about the children being with him so he could take the blame for whatever happened. Moss is was in Flagler County Drug Court between 2013 and November 2017.
The case from that point on was in the hands of DCF on one side and those of a sheriff’s detective on the other. The child, his mother had told deputies from the intensive care unit, had been doing better and seemed out of danger.
woodchuck says
Welcome to Palm Coast.
Really says
Just tell the truth for once its your child SMH
Usual Suspects says
The arrest record of the child’s mother says it all.
Speak the truth says
I pray this baby will be ok and taken out of that house. How disgusting all of them are. Why would you leave medicine in reach of a child and I am not buying the it was in a bottle story. She is a junkie who proved she is a unfit mother. Please take this baby away from those idiots.
Trailer Bob says
What the hell is wrong with people. A small toddler should be kept safely away from anything dangerous, including prescription medications. Didn’t you learn anything growing up? Hope the child gets well.
Concerned Resident says
Poor child. Deserves much better than living with these lying addicts.
Only Me says
If, this poor helpless child makes it, I pray the courts take it away from its Mom and any other children in that house hold. And all those involved be charged.
curran17 says
Drug treatment is not for those that need it, its for those who want it. You can ” court order” all you want judge but they have to WANT this and WORK a program for life. SMH
Born and Raised Here says
How can someone give false information to protect themself, and jepordize a child’s life
ASF says
Just as people receiving Methadone need more than just the Methadone to deal with their addiction and help extinguishing their “addict behaviors”, so do those receiving substances to get over generalized Opioid addiction, Addiction is addiction and it is a serious disease that needs to be fought on multiple fronts. It may not seem “fair” and no one asks to become an addict–but addiction is what it is. It needs to be dealt with for what it is…a disease process.
Disgusted says
This is a reply to ALL of the comments left on this page; I know the mother of this child personally! She is strong, smart, hard working, and doing her BEST as a single mother! I’m disgusted by the negative and nasty comments Im reading about her! She is HUMAN and as HUMANS we ALL make mistakes! Our past DOES NOT define who we are in the present! If anyone on here that left a comment has small children then you know ANYTHING can happen in a split second! So remember this BEFORE you judge someone and leave such NASTY, VILE comments about someone you don’t know!!!
ASF says
@Disgusted says: Anyone who really cares about this family will support efforts towards intensive addiction counseling for all members. If there is a mental health component to the story, they should seek out services for those who are dually diagnosed and their loved ones. THAT is caring. Defensive anger,enabling and making excuses is counter-productive. THAT is honesty–I hope you will take it as such.
Scout says
As a drug court graduate myself, suboxone or subutex is just another way for a junkie to get a fix. I was in WARM with her as well. Hopefully she gets turned around. This is a true shame
Truth says
I agree, but at the end of the day folks are going to judge not knowing the full story. All you can do is pray for them and watch how tables turn when it’s them or a close relative that’s in the same situation and they will be on here repeating what you just said.
Really says
In the end she is the user plain and simple. She chooses to shoot, snort, ingest whstevrr. Enough said its a choice…
thethingis says
correct me if i am wrong but this is going on in the PRESENT not the past right? So maybe the past doesnt define who we are in the present but i think the present does define who we are n the present. Presently this baby got drugs from a person who was careless and lied about how the baby got them. So her past does not define her present but her present just happens to be as bad or worse than her past.