Nation
VA mother charged with murder after 4yr old dies from THC gummies
A woman in Spotsylvania County, Virginia faces felony murder and child neglect charges for not getting help soon enough when her 4-year-old son was found unresponsive after eating marijuana-infused gummies.
An autopsy report shows Tanner Clements had “extremely high levels of THC in his system” when he died two days after his mother, Dorothy Annette Clements, found him unresponsive.
The mother told a police officer that her son only ate half of a CBD gummy and that she called poison control and was told the boy would be OK. The information was obtained in search warrant documents.
The detective said she found an entire empty THC gummy jar in the house; an amount more likely to match the high amount of THC that the autopsy said caused the boy’s death. NBC 4 reports “Investigators said he might have survived had Dorothy Annette Clements gotten help for him sooner.”
“THC gummies definitely in any quantity pose a risk to children. There’s many reasons for that. One is that the packaging does not include any kind of a child-proof mechanism,” Dr. Jill McCabe, a pediatric emergency room physician at Inova Loudoun Hospital, told News4. “They also look like candy and so they are something, when children come across them, most children are going to put that in their mouth and ingest it.”
The amount of THC in gummies is not regulated and varies widely; but any amount of THC can be problematic for children, and the issue is growing, added McCabe.
Parents should lock up any products with THC to make sure kids can’t get to them, McCabe said.
A letter from Brian Laundrie’s mother revealed her willingness to aid her son in hiding his crime. Roberta, Laundries mother, wrote “burn after reading” on the front and was allegedly committed to helping her son dispose of a body.
The letter has now become the epicenter of a civil suit the Petito family has brought against the Laundrie family. The Petitos are suing the Laundries for emotional distress due to the lack of communication with the Petito family when their daughter had gone missing.
The Laundrie family has claimed that the letter is irrelevant to the case because it was given to their son before the tragically fatal disappearance of Petito. On Tuesday during the hearing, Defense Attorney P. Matthew Luka said, “This document pre-dates Brian and Gabby’s trip so its creation really doesn’t have any relation necessarily to the unfortunate events that unfolded thereafter.” He added, “I know that some of the wording that was used in the letter is unfortunate and might suggest that it has some connection but it doesn’t.”
So what does the letter say?
“If you’re in jail I will bake a cake with a file in it. If you need to dispose of a body. I will show up with a shovel and garbage bags,” Roberta wrote to her son in the letter.
“If you’re in jail I will bake a cake with a file in it. If you need to dispose of a body. I will show up with a shovel and garbage bags.”
This is the Roberta Laundrie “burn after reading” letter she gave to Brian Laundrie.
Sent to me by Petito family attorney. pic.twitter.com/VIiLk3wa4J— Brian Entin (@BrianEntin) May 25, 2023
According to reports, Roberta said the verbiage she used in the letter, specifically about the disposal of a body, “were common enough in our circle of friends and family to describe who you could turn to in the most troubling times of your life.”
Moreover, one user on Twitter responded to the tweet of the letter, speculating that Roberta’s letter “sounds like a Jocasta complex,” specifically in response to a section of the letter where she wrote, “not even the unthinkable can get between us.”
The Laundrie family continues to claim that they believe they have done everything the correct way and that Gabby Petito’s disappearance was just as much a mystery to them as to the rest of the world. They claim that they had no knowledge of her disappearance and that the letter is purely a coincidence, with no connection to the fatal loss of Gabby Petito. According to reports, the trial will be held in August of this year.
Follow Alexander Carter @AlexCarterDC on Twitter for more!
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