Mom partied with cocaine —then her toddler got into her pill bottle, Texas cops say
Brenda Monsarret-Lopez, a 25-year-old mom, told police after her 2-year-old daughter was released from the hospital that mom “just wanted to have fun,” according to a criminal complaint from the Houston Police Department.
The hospital visit in September was the second time this year that Monsarret-Lopez’s daughter had to get her stomach pumped at the hospital after getting into mom’s pill bottle full of Clonidine, the complaint reads. Clonidine is a pill often prescribed to treat attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, or ADHD, according to WebMD.
Police in Houston have charged Monsarret-Lopez with felony child endangerment, according to court records. She has yet to be arrested, though, according to KPRC.
The exposure to the Clonidine would have been scary enough, but police say after the child’s second ingestion, she also tested positive for ingesting cocaine.
Police have not released her daughter’s name. The Clonidine prescription is actually for another child in Monsarret-Lopez’ care, according to the complaint, but she kept it in here purse.
At first, Monsarret-Lopez told a Child Protective Services investigator that she wanted her daughter tested again, because she didn’t believe there was any way cocaine ended up in her system, because she “doesn’t do any drugs.”
But just moments later, she admitted that about two weeks before the hospital trip, she said she went out and had “some fun,” and she might have “carried drugs” that night, according to the complaint. She changed her story to say that she believed rubbing her children’s hair after carrying drugs is how her daughter “got cocaine in her hair,” the complaint reads.
In a later interview with a CPS investigator, Monsarret-Lopez admitted to going to a party at a club, using cocaine there, and storing the leftover cocaine in the Clonidine bottle in her purse, according to the complaint.
She denied bringing the drug home, though. CPS investigators deemed that the positive hair follicle drug test result on her daughter is “evidence of supervisory neglect.”
The child’s first Clonidine ingestion happened in July.
Monsarret-Lopez was previously convicted of a misdemeanor prostitution charge in 2014, according to Harris County court records.
This story was originally published November 21, 2018 at 8:53 AM.
