A 9-month-old child is hospitalized after consuming the powerful opioid fentanyl in their parent's Bensalem, Pennsylvania, apartment, police said.
Paramedics were called to the family's home along the 2000 block of Finch Drive on Friday night. The child was in cardiac arrest, police said.
Medics gave the child naloxone, the overdose reversal drug, to prevent them from dying, police said. The child was taken to St. Christopher's Hospital for Children in Philadelphia for treatment.
There the child was put on a steady dose of naloxone after a urine test showed fentanyl present in the body. The baby remains stable, police said.
Fentanyl is a painkiller that is highly-addictive and extremely potent. It can be 100 times stronger than morphine. Alongside heroin, fentanyl is a major contributor to the ongoing opioid epidemic in the United States.
Police said the child's parents, Michael Picardi and Maria Dolderer, refused to say how the baby ingested the synthetic opiate.
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They noted that the apartment was unfurnished and unkempt and that several medicine bottles were found throughout the home. One bottle — acetaminophen with codeine — was found in the baby's swing.
Picardi and Dolderer are charged with endangering the welfare of a child, a felony. Court records did not show an attorney for either parent. They were unable to post $200,000 bail and remain jailed at the Bucks County correctional facility.
