Sep 19, 2009 10:25 pm US/Eastern
Child Swallows Cocaine At N.J. Daycare Center
Father Trying To Hide Drugs On Boy Tells Him It's Candy
EAST ORANGE, N.J. (CBS) ―
A New Jersey father is under arrest in a case that's difficult to believe.
It started when he allegedly stashed cocaine in his four-year-old's clothes, and ended with four children at a daycare center being rushed to the hospital.
When Shareed Wright's four-year-old son went to daycare Friday morning, his pockets were full of a white substance the little boy thought was candy. As it turns out, the candy his dad gave him was actually cocaine, according to Newark police.
"This is a great school, I can't believe something like this happened," Sakinah King, whose children go to the same daycare center, said.
The little boy gave the cocaine to three of his classmates when they asked him for some candy. A teacher at the center noticed something in one of their mouths and called paramedics, who rushed them to Beth Israel Hospital.
King's three-year-old son had a doctor's appointment or he, too, would have been at the center with the other children.
"It could have happened to my child," King said. "If he's passing out stuff, my son probably would have taken it from him."
"Tests done here at the hospital revealed that only one of the 4 children had actually ingested the cocaine. That child was treated and then released."
"When it's a situation like this, it's not really the directors and the teachers," King said. "It's the parent's fault, because parents shouldn't have that around their children anyway."
Police say Wright stashed the cocaine in his son's pocket after a near-brush with police.
Wright, who was being held at the Essex County Jail on $400,000 bail, was charged with four counts of child endangerment and drug offenses. He is not listed in the phone book, and police do not know if he has retained a lawyer.
New Jersey's Division of Youth Services is also looking into the case.
(© MMX, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)
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