Parents arrested as 11 month old baby tests positive for cocaine

The National Police have arrested the parents of an eleven-month-old baby in Estepona (Malaga) who tested positive for cocaine and who had to stay in ICU for over a month due to his poor health. The Regional Government of Andalusia have officially declared the infant homeless as his parents are detained.

According to a police press release, investigators found that the parents, who were arrested for a crime of mistreatment and child abuse, are users of the drug in question, and that the father had already been arrested for drug dealing.

The investigation, carried out by UFAM agents from the Estepona Police Station, began at the beginning of December after reporting the admission of a baby of just eleven months old to a hospital in Marbella, according to the press statement.

The mother brought the boy came to emergencies as he was suffering from a stomach problem, and doctors couldn’t believe it when he tested positive for cocaine in a laboratory test. The worsening of his health led him to enter into the ICU of a hospital in Malaga just a few days later.

The report shows that the boy remained in ICU until mid-January when he was transferred to the wards, and the evolution of the child’s health to date is favourable, even though he is still hospitalized.

With the initial information, UFAM agents began to inquire about the minor's environment and learned that the baby lived in a property in Estepona with his parents, another daughter of the couple who is five years old, and some uncles and aunties, one of which is the mother’s sister.

Continuing with their investigations, officials also discovered that when the mother was in the final stretch of her last pregnancy, she went to hospital with a health problem and, after an analysis, tested positive for cocaine, a circumstance that would make the baby was born with withdrawal syndrome. In fact after arduous procedures, the agents learned that both the father and the mother of the minor are habitual cocaine users.

After getting a search warrant, police were able to enter the family home and arrested the boy’s parents, the father a man of Colombian nationality and the mother a Spanish woman, both 26 years old.

Finally, social services for the protection of minors under order of the regional Government of Andalucía declared the baby in distress, and visits to the child by his parents were prohibited, by court order. Currently the baby's 5-year-old sister has been taken in, temporarily, by her uncles.

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