A set of parents in Washington state – Ashlee Hutt, 24, and Mac Leroy McIver, 25 – are being charged for various cases of child abuse.
The family’s property wasn’t just rife with rat droppings and drug needles, but both Hutt and McIver injected their three children with heroin on a regular basis.
Their kids were two, four, and six years old. All three have since been taken in by protective custody.
Pierce County Sheriff’s Department spokesman, Detective Ed Troyer, noted, “The kids lived in deplorable conditions. It wasn’t a good living situation even without the issue of heroin.”
“Aluminum foil rolls and cooker heroin were observed in the bedroom on the dresser next to the bed,” was what one investigator wrote in the original affidavit.
As social workers tended to the children’s needs, they discovered that the two-year-old sustained many bruises at various drug injection sites. The six-year-old even told the social workers that McIver choked him and his two siblings various times, as well as injected them with “feel good medicine.”
The “feel good medicine” was “white powder which was mixed with water” that was injected into the three kids – heroin.
Two months after the children were discovered and rescued from these conditions, the six-year-old had a negative heroin test, the four-year-old had the drug in her system but at a low level, but the two-year-old tested positive.
Both Hutt and McIver pleaded not guilty and said the babysitter must have been injecting their children with heroin in their absence.
The parents’ court dates have yet to come, but we can only hope that justice will be served and their children find safer homes in the coming months.
