Mother’s meth use caused 1-month-old baby’s overdose death, Fort Worth police say
Swanietra Cooke was the last person to see her infant son alive, according to an arrest warrant affidavit.
She fed the baby about 6 or 7 o’clock in the morning on July 27 last year and put him back to bed, she told Fort Worth police.
By 12:30 p.m. that same day, 1-month-old Zachariah Gianni Cooke was dead from what the Tarrant County Medical Examiner’s Office later determined was a methamphetamine overdose. He died in the emergency room at Cook Children’s Hospital.
His mother had been smoking the drug steps away from his crib, according to the police account of the case.
Cooke, 36, was arrested Tuesday and faces a charge of manslaughter, a second-degree felony, in her child’s death, according to online police records.
On the day Zachariah died, his aunt told police the baby had been taken from his mother at birth.
Cooke later admitted to police that Zachariah was born with meth in his system, and that another child in the home had been the one to find the baby unresponsive, according to the affidavit supporting her arrest.
That child later told police in a forensic interview that Cooke “would always” smoke with Zachariah in the room.
When police searched Cooke’s home, they found two glass pipes, one of which was in a bedside table next to the baby’s crib, a detective wrote in the affidavit.
An oral drug swab and a urine test for Cooke returned positive for methamphetamine and benzodiazepines, the affidavit states.
Cooke is being held in the Tarrant County Jail on a $75,000 bond.
This story was originally published January 14, 2026 at 4:56 PM.
