An Ohio boy who was photographed in an SUV while his grandmother and her boyfriend were passed out from a drug overdose has been placed with family hundreds of kilometres away.
Rhonda Pasek had only weeks before been granted custody of her 3-year-old grandchild when police found the 50-year-old and her 47-year-old boyfriend, James Lee Acord passed in the front of their car from an apparent drug overdose on September 7 in East Liverpool, Ohio.
Police took a photo of the incident – the two adults passed out while the boy was strapped to his car seat in the back – and circulated it on social media to show the menace of heroin and drug use in the East Liverpool area.
Pasek is in custody facing charges of endangering a child and public intoxication. Acord pleaded no contest to operating a vehicle while intoxicated and endangering children and is is serving 360 days in jail, reports The New York Post.
Since the incident the child’s mother has been identified as crack-smoking stripper Reva McCullough who told the Daily Mail “bawled for four days straight” when she saw the picture of her son and paternal grandmother.
The 25-year-old, who reportedly dances at a strip club under the name of ‘Mercedes’, claims she no longer takes drugs but authorities have placed the boy in the care of a great aunt and uncle in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina.
While there was some backlash against the distribution of the photograph public safety chief Brian Allen was unrepentant in the actions of the police claiming that the reactions have been “90 percent positive, 10 per cent negative.”
