Joe Yates
A Missouri mom has been arrested and charged over the death of her daughter after she gave her a pill she found in her drawer, according to court documents.
The 14-year-old, who is yet to be named, came to her 35-year-old mom Jacquelyn Powers, who goes by 'Jackie', complaining that she was experiencing toothache on October 3.
Just 10 hours later, the child was found dead.
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On Friday (November 8), Powers was arrested outside her home in the city of Overland, in St Louis County, and charged with endangering the welfare of a child, as well as felony death of a child.
An autopsy stated how the juvenile showed high traces of fentanyl in her blood and concluded the teen died of a fentanyl overdose.
The narcotic is a severe painkiller that is commonly abused in the US and is around 50 times stronger than heroin and 100 times stronger than morphine. It was also used to treat World War II casualties on the field.
Powers has stated that she believed the pill she gave her daughter was oxycodone.
According to the NHS, the UK's publicly funded healthcare system, 'oxycodone is an opioid painkiller. It's used to treat severe pain, for example after an operation or a serious injury, or pain from cancer'.
Court documents state that Powers explained she had oxycodone in the house from a previous surgery, but conceded that she traded some of those pills to her own mom for pills the young girls grandma had sourced from a street dealer in order to 'protect her'.
Both the fentanyl and oxycodone were stored in the same drawer.
Overland Police Department Capt. Jim Morgan, said per the Daily Mail: "This is tragic. This shouldn’t happen. She's 14, she had a lot of years to look forward to."
While the executive director of the Assisted Recovery Centers of America, Aaron Laxton, urged residents to learn from the tragedy reiterating that drugs like fentanyl should not be stored in a family home.
Speaking to Fox 2, he said: “In this instance, it was fentanyl, and certainly should not have been in the home in the first place.
“We warn folks not to trust the street-pressed pills that are purchased out on the streets because you simply don’t know what’s in them."
Powers' next court hearing is scheduled to take place on November 19, with the mom's bond held at $150,000.