NEW YORK — A 4-year-old girl brought crack cocaine home from her New York City day care, the child's mother told WPIX.
Sabrina Straker said she was horrified when her daughter, Serenity, showed her the capsules and explained she'd put one of them in her mouth. The girl gave her mom the capsules on Friday. She told Straker another child in the day care gave her his "teeth," but when Straker looked at the capsules, she knew something was wrong.
"This can't be what I think it is," Straker said she thought at the time. "How did this get in the day care?"
She immediately went to the 46th Precinct to alert police. Narcotics detectives ran a test on the capsules and confirmed it was crack cocaine.
Serenity was then rushed to a hospital where she tested positive for the drugs. Serenity had put one of the capsules in her mouth, but then spat it out.
“She could have died if she ingested this," Straker said. "I was furious.”
WPIX spoke with Yvette Joseph, the director at the Little Inventors Day Care on Andrews Avenue in the Bronx, to get answers. She said someone threw the drugs over the fence and it fell into the hands of one of the children.
“We checked our center thoroughly and all of the children are safe," Joseph said.
Police are looking at all possibilities, and will also investigate any possible involvement of the child's own family.
Straker wants the day care shut down, she questioned how staff there failed to notice the children passing around the capsules filled with drugs that look like candy.
“No one was watching the children," she said. "There are 15 kids in the room with two teachers and two aides, where were they when this was going on?"
WPIX reached out to the Administration for Children's Services to see if the agency is looking into this, but they have not yet responded. The NYPD is investigating this as an endangering the welfare of a child case.
