Fewer Missouri teens dying from fentanyl. But, crisis is still killing toddlers
In late March, a 3-year-old Leavenworth boy known as EJ fell asleep for the night on a neighbor’s couch after eating grapes.
Before sunrise the next morning, the little boy who loved Spiderman and wanted to play sports when he got bigger wasn’t breathing. Officers tried to resuscitate him, doing repeated CPR on his small body, as his mother sat in her neighbor’s apartment watching police try to save him.
It would be weeks before authorities knew for sure what killed him, though drugs were suspected from the beginning. Before long, EJ was counted as one more victim of fentanyl, a highly potent illicit drug that since 2020 has killed dozens of babies and toddlers ages 4 and younger in Kansas and Missouri alone.
Despite education and training efforts — especially in Missouri where the total number of children 17 and under dying from fentanyl has significantly dropped in the past three years — the youngest are still becoming victims.
“These children cannot protect themselves, and they rely entirely on the adults around them,” said Baylee Watts, spokesperson with the Missouri Department of Social Services. “This reality complicates prevention efforts, as the solutions hinge on supporting and altering adult behavior.”
Two months before EJ died in Leavenworth, a 16-month-old boy in Kansas City was rushed to Children’s Mercy Hospital in the early morning hours of Jan. 28. His father, Terry Canady, told a witness that his son, who was pronounced dead at the hospital, “unzipped my pockets and opened up the bag and got into the fentanyl,” according to court records.
A report from the Jackson County Medical Examiner’s Office showed the little boy “had methamphetamine in his urine and a pill-like fragment in the intestine,” records stated. A toxicology report showed he tested positive for meth and fentanyl.
Since 2020, fentanyl has killed at least 150 children under the age of 18 in Kansas and Missouri. That number is likely higher, considering neither state has numbers for this year; and in Kansas, the child death fatality review board only has information from 2020 to 2022.
When you look at just babies and toddlers, where fentanyl has taken a devastating toll, 53 kids in Missouri ages 4 and under died of fentanyl poisoning from 2020 to 2024. And for the three years Kansas has numbers available, several more young children died in the Sunflower State, though the exact number isn’t clear.
Then, this year, there was EJ.
Drugs throughout the apartment
In court records, authorities don’t specifyt how EJ got hold of the illicit drugs. But residue, powder and used needles were found throughout the Leavenworth apartment, according to an affidavit describing charges against the babysitter and her boyfriend. The pair were charged last month.
Meth and fentanyl from a swab on the couch. A bag of meth on a kitchen table. A baggie under the table with residue from cocaine, fentanyl and meth. A corner tie from the couch cup holder tested positive for meth.
The babysitter, Tara Huerta, allegedly told police she hadn’t used drugs in the previous two days before EJ’s death. Huerta’s boyfriend, Kenneth Hedgecock, allegedly told officers they had smoked fentanyl in the bathroom the day before and flushed it down the toilet once they were done, so EJ wouldn’t have access to it.
Both have been charged with first-degree murder, three counts of possession of opiate, opium, narcotic, or certain stimulant, and possession with intent to use drug paraphernalia.
Around midnight on the morning of his death, EJ was asleep on that same couch when the couple, who were on a nearby bed on the floor, saw he was breathing differently and appeared to be “having a bad dream,” according to court records. EJ opened his eyes to Hedgecock yelling his name and quickly fell back asleep.
Almost four and a half hours later, the couple woke up to a breathless little boy.
In a previous interview with The Star, EJ’s mother, Briana Davis, spoke about how prevalent drugs are in the Leavenworth community and at her apartment complex, Woodland Village Apartments.
“It’s a whole drug town,” Davis said. “Drugs is all over this place, and I hate it.”
‘Everybody has leaned in’
In Kansas, the State Child Death Review Board reported no children died of fentanyl in 2017 through 2019, 11 died in 2020 and nine died in 2021. There was no indication of what specific ages that included.
By the next year, state officials knew that fentanyl had only become a bigger problem.
“Fentanyl-related deaths have surged,” said the Kansas Child Death Review Board Annual Report using 2022 data, “and were twice as high in 2021 and 2022 compared to 2020 and 22 times greater than in 2018 and 2019.”
For Missouri, 2022 was such a deadly year — 43 children under the age of 18 died from the illicit drug — that former DSS director Robert Knodell created the Fentanyl Case Review Subcommittee, which was a panel of experts who studied those cases.
Among those fentanyl deaths were 20 young children — ages 4 and under — and seven of those babies and toddlers were from Jackson County.
The Missouri kids didn’t suffer from debilitating addictions because their parents were using; they died of actual fentanyl overdoses. The babies and toddlers came across the synthetic opioid and its residue in their homes, inside hotel rooms and even at a city park.
The panel studying those cases released a report last year describing how the state child welfare agency missed warning signs and failed to protect dozens of children from dying of the illicit drug. The report also stated that safety protocols in place were inadequate.
“It was hard to be on that panel,” said member Emily van Schenkhof, executive director of the Children’s Trust Fund, Missouri’s foundation for child abuse prevention. “I think it was hard for every person on that panel to dig through these cases and see, particularly the places where we felt like if we had done something just a little bit different, that child would still be here.”
But the ultimate goal for her and others, van Schenkhof said, was to determine “what can we do now?”
The panel recommended that agency leaders focus on training, improve safety standards, and make sure drug concerns inside families are thoroughly investigated. Other suggestions included improving the coordination between the Missouri Department of Mental Health and children’s division and educating workers on the best options when fentanyl is involved.
Since that report, which for many depicted a harsh reality of the devastation fentanyl had caused in Missouri, DSS and the state’s Children’s Division has worked with other agencies, including health officials and law enforcement and the child welfare system has implemented changes in how cases involving fentanyl are handled.
Preliminary numbers for 2024 showed that just 12 children under the age of 18 died, compared to 43 two years before.
Van Schenkhof praised the state’s child welfare agency for adapting and changing the way it investigated cases that may involve fentanyl.
“I think that people became more aware that this was a really serious issue that had to be addressed in a different way,” van Schenkhof said. “It speaks to the fact that when you bring a lot of energy and time to try to solve a problem, you actually can.
“It’s almost impossible to get those numbers down to zero, but I think it shows that you can make a difference when you think about multiple strategies that need to be addressed and put to bear on a particular issue.”
Sara Smith, director of Missouri’s Children’s Division, agreed.
“I think everybody has leaned in,” said Smith, who was appointed director in March. “I’m very optimistic that those numbers will continue to go down if we continue to work together.”
The preliminary numbers in 2024 show that statewide education efforts in Missouri appear to have been especially successful in lowering the number of teens dying from fentanyl. In 2022, 20 teens ages 15-17 died of fentanyl. That dropped to just two teens in that age group in 2024.
Teens can “understand and make choices when given the right information,” Watts said. “However, the situation is very different for toddlers and infants.”
“ … They are harmed when adults around them use or store drugs unsafely,” she said. “The lethality of fentanyl means that even a trace amount can be fatal for a small child.”
Jessica Seitz, executive director of the Missouri Network Against Child Abuse, said she didn’t understand how deadly fentanyl could be until she was on the panel and reviewed cases.
“If there’s any potential of fentanyl being around, it’s a loaded gun for a (young) child,” Seitz said. “You can’t take any chances with this drug.”
Increasing training and protocol
In Missouri, workers across the children’s division are now trained on what to do if the drug may be a possible concern with a family.
“It’s not just something that is an investigations thing or an FCS, family-centered services thing or an alternative care thing,” Smith said. “We want to make sure all of our team members across the board are trained and know what to do when we encounter potential fentanyl use in a home.”
If a hotline call comes in where fentanyl is mentioned as a concern with a family, team members are expected to “staff with a supervisor before they even leave the office,” Smith said.
“We just want to make sure we’re responding appropriately, and that is always going to involve law enforcement.”
Haylee Musso helped lead the Fentanyl Case Review Subcommittee. She’s now the deputy legislative liaison for the children’s division and sees all sides of the fentanyl crisis.
“When you think through an issue like this, and you go back to strengthening the multidisciplinary team, I think you can’t really look at these numbers in just the lens of the children’s division,” Musso said. “I think you’ve also got to look at it through what have our medical providers changed since they were involved in this work?
“And what has changed with the law enforcement response or the EMS response? From you know, really, everybody trying to address this crisis as it happened.”
Part of the goal of the subcommittee, Musso said, was “pulling together as child welfare in Missouri, and what can we do as a whole to really prevent these fatalities?”
The connection with the multidisciplinary team is crucial, Smith said, referring to police, medical providers and other agencies in the state.
“We try to have them at the table,” she said. “Law enforcement needs to be at the table around fentanyl-related concerns.”
Other than making sure police are contacted, workers are instructed to take safety precautions and make sure that families understand the risk involved with the highly potent illicit drug.
The preliminary numbers for 2024 show that of the 12 Missouri children that died from fentanyl last year, eight of those were ages 4 or under.
Because of that, officials know there is more work to do, said Watts, a DSS spokesperson.
“As an agency, we must focus on prevention and protection at the household level,” Watts said in an email. “This means expanding education for parents and caregivers, enhancing support for families struggling with addiction and equipping CD team members and community partners with appropriate training to identify and respond quickly.”
Watts said the child welfare agency also will maintain collaboration with public health officials, law enforcement and treatment providers to prevent tragedies connected to fentanyl and other drugs.
The fact that babies and toddlers continue to die from ingesting fentanyl will likely come up in a meeting next month.
DSS will reconvene the panel that studied the fentanyl deaths in 2022 and made recommendations. The subcommittee will gather for a one-day meeting to discuss what’s been accomplished, what is happening now and what still needs to be done.
Another key topic? What may be the drug epidemic in the future, Smith said, so officials across agencies can work together to get ahead of it.
“Fentanyl is the thing now, but I remember when meth was the thing,” Smith said. “I remember when bath salts were the thing. And so how do we get ahead so we don’t end up like we did in 2022.
“We’re working with our medical team members and partners and law enforcement to identify things before we’re at the spot.”
Van Schenkhof said she was grateful to see the agency bring the group back together.
“It’s really necessary that we continue to do this,” she said, “that we don’t just say, ‘OK, numbers are down, you know, moving on.’”
