AUGUSTA — A month after a Sidney couple brought their year-old daughter to the hospital after she allegedly swallowed heroin at home, Massachusetts police reported finding them smoking marijuana in a vehicle with the baby in a car seat in the back.
Jason D. Thomas, 34, and Katie J. Robinson, 23, were indicted Friday on charges of unlawful possession of heroin and endangering the welfare of a child on July 17 in Sidney.
Thomas is free on $5,000 cash bail with conditions that prohibit him from contact with the child and other children under 12.
Robinson is free on $1,000 bail, and she is not prohibited from living with the child. Kennebec County District Attorney Maeghan Maloney said Tuesday that her office had argued against allowing Robinson to have contact with the child, but a judge allowed it after hearing that there is no open case involving the family with the Department of Health and Human Services.
Maloney said it appeared the child recovered from the opiate incident “as best we can tell. We don’t know what the lasting effects are.”
Maloney said she does not know where the child is living now.
Both Thomas and Robinson are scheduled for court hearings in April, when they will be arraigned on the indictments.
An attorney for Robinson was unreachable by phone on Tuesday. There was no indication in court files that Thomas has an attorney.
In the Lawrence, Massachusetts, case, Thomas and Robinson were charged with child endangerment and possession of marijuana with intent to distribute.
The Massachusetts charges were dismissed in December 2015, according to a clerk in Lawrence District Court. However, she said warrants are out for both Thomas and Robinson because counsel fees or court costs are owed in both cases.
In that Aug. 19, 2015, incident in Lawrence, the then-14-month-old was taken to a hospital in Massachusetts, referred to that state’s Office of Health and Human Services and later released to her grandmother.
That incident was described in an affidavit by Kennebec County Sheriff’s Office Detective Michael Bickford, who was seeking an arrest warrant for Thomas on Jan. 5, 2016.
According to Bickford, a detective with the Lawrence Police Department said that the couple, the child and another woman were parked in a VIP Tires & Service parking lot and observed by a Massachusetts drug task force working undercover.
“When the officers approached the vehicle, they could smell the odor of fresh and burnt marijuana,” Bickford wrote. “Thomas was seen by officers throwing something under his seat.”
Bickford said officers located two mason jars containing marijuana on the floor of the car where Thomas was sitting. Bickford said Thomas told Lawrence officers during questioning, “That’s nothing; I grow pounds of (it).”
Bickford also said Robinson had $6,006 in cash in her possession and told police they had gone to Lawrence to buy a vehicle.
Bickford also said the Massachusetts “officers searched the vehicle and found hypodermic syringes and a spoon with a tan power residue believed to be heroin within arms’ reach” of the child.
In the Kennebec County case, the child allegedly ingested heroin on July 17, 2015, in Sidney.
According to the same affidavit, Bickford said the couple took their 1-year-old to the MaineGeneral Medical Center in Augusta after they saw her acting “lethargic and moving very slowly.” Tests there showed she was under the influence of opiates.
Robinson said she had no idea how the child could have come into contact with them. Robinson told police the couple had a bonfire previously and “someone must have left something laying around” that the child found.
Bickford’s affidavit said Robinson said she has never used drugs and Thomas told them “he is clean and he goes to the clinic every day to stay clean.”
Thomas said other people were visiting and working at the house.
Police then obtained a warrant to search the couple’s Sidney home, and they reported finding a hypodermic syringe in the master bathroom, a small plastic baggie containing suspected heroin and a spoon with a burn mark.
Those were found in the bedroom of a 12-year-old, Bickford said.
They also found marijuana and reported removing some because it was not in compliance with medical marijuana laws.
Later, laboratory reports from MaineGeneral Medical Center indicated the child tested positive for morphine and codine, and Bickford said a doctor at the Northern New England Poison Center in Portland told him that “heroin will metastasize in the human body as morphine,” and that only morphine or heroin would have produced that result.
Police returned to the Sidney home on Nov. 11, 2015, in response to a reported drug overdose involving a man who later recovered. That man was not Thomas.
Bickford said the man was found with two hypodermic syringes, a small plastic bag and a piece of cotton on the floor next to him.
In Maine, the unlawful possession of heroin is a felony and carries a five-year maximum term of imprisonment. Endangering the welfare of a child is a misdemeanor offense with a maximum jail term of 364 days.
Thomas has previous convictions in Kennebec County, including one for drug trafficking in 2006, in which he was sentenced to a 10-year prison term and ordered to serve an initial four years and five months of that with the remainder suspended.
Published records show Robinson was convicted in June 2012 of unlawful possession of oxycodone and trafficking in prison contraband in Augusta and was sentenced to serve an initial 28 days, with the remainder of a two-year jail term suspended. She was placed on two years of probation.
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