Mom Of Girl Who Handed Out Heroin-Filled Packets At Daycare Is Sentenced

The Delaware woman whose four-year-old daughter showed up at daycare with a heroin-filled backpack was sentenced in court this week.

As The Inquisitr previously reported, the preschooler took 249 packets of heroin to a daycare center in Selbyville, Del., last October and started handing them out to classmates, thinking it was candy. Fortunately, Hickory Tree Child Care Center workers spotted the packets before any were opened or ingested by the children. Police and EMTs responded to the scene, however, and the kids were examined at a local hospital as a precaution.

No one was harmed in what could have been a show-and-tell gone very wrong.

Selbyville cops tested the white powder, the results of which indicated it was heroin. “Tull claimed she gave her daughter the wrong backpack before school,” Mediaite noted. A police report apparently had suggested that the girl had taken her mother’s backpack to school that day after the family dog ruined her old one

On Wednesday, Ashley Tull, 30, the mom, pleaded guilty in Delaware Superior Court to one count of child endangerment and received a sentence of one year of probation along with substance abuse evaluation, according to Delaware 10.5 FM.

Failure to comply with Family Services directives could result in Tull losing custody of her three kids to the state, the judge indicated. “Tull’s attorney Thomas Pedersen said Tull has custody of her daughter and two older children, a 9-year-old boy and an 11-year-old girl,” the Delaware Cape Gazette added. As part of the guilty plea on one count, Tull apparently gave up, i.e., waived her right to a court trial.

At the time of the arrest, Tull was originally charged with maintaining a drug property and three counts of child endangerment.

While police said a total of 3.735 grams of heroin were confiscated at the daycare center, enough for a felony possession charge, the mother was not charged for possession or as a suspected dealer.

It’s very possible that the sentence was the result of a plea bargain, which is often the outcome in criminal courts across the country.

Do you think the seemingly light court sentence in the heroin daycare incident was appropriate or merely a slap on the wrist for the mom of the four-year-old?

[image via YouTube]

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