Florida`s First Flakka Baby: Born Premature, Only Lived One Hour

Oct. 09--FORT LAUDERDALE -- The premature three-pound, two-ounce infant lived only an hour.

His legacy: Broward County's youngest, most innocent victim of the street drug flakka.

Born to a mother who smoked the dangerous substance during pregnancy, the baby boy was approximately nine weeks premature and had the synthetic stimulant flakka, or alpha-PVP, in his blood stream, heart and umbilical cord, according to an autopsy report obtained by the Sun Sentinel.

The Broward Medical Examiner has ruled the child's July 3 death as accidental, a combined "result of prematurity and alpha-PVP (flakka) toxicity," the report said.

Flakka has torpedoed Broward County over the last year, giving rise to bizarre behaviors, hospitalizations, arrests and growing concern. As a result, the medical examiner has taken to highlighting flakka's presence in fatalities.

The drug has contributed to more than 40 Broward deaths in the last year, according to the medical examiner's office.

"It's the worst drug ever seen," said Dr. Nabil El Sanadi, CEO of North Broward Hospital District and director of the system's emergency services. "Heart rate, blood pressure and temperatures are all dysregulated because of that drug -- imagine the effect of that on an unborn child."

Born at approximately 31-weeks gestation, the child is the first Broward baby to die with flakka in its system. Little is known about the unpredictable drug other than its tendency to wreak havoc on users' nervous systems and incite paranoia, psychosis and diabolical hallucinations.

"It's the first we've seen," Mallak said of the baby's case. "There are no studies. There's no literature about it. You can't do control tests on pregnant women and give them flakka."

Factoring in the mother's history of mental-health issues and repeated hospitalizations for psychological evaluations, the Broward Sheriff's Office closed its death investigation last week, opting not to send the case to prosecutors for review.

A spokeswoman for the sheriff's office declined to comment on that decision. "We'll let the document speak for itself," Keyla Concepcion said of detectives' reports detailing the investigation.

According to those reports, the child's 34-year-old mother has been diagnosed with schizophrenia, frequently smokes flakka and prostitutes herself for drug money.

She had lost custody of her four older children to the state Department of Children and Families before the baby's death, the reports said.

"We never want to hear of this kind of thing again," El Sanadi said. "This is the time to sound the alarm even louder about use and abuse of flakka and how deleterious and how harmful it could be to not just the users but also to the unborn children of pregnant women, as well as children of adult users."

The baby boy's grandmother, Evelyn Barnes, said she's at a loss for how to deal with her daughter's issues. "I don't know how to take care of her," Barnes said in a telephone interview Thursday. "I don't know what to do for her."

The baby's mother was home alone when she gave birth in an apartment she shared with her mother in the 2800 block of Northwest 15th Street in unincorporated Fort Lauderdale, an incident report shows.

It was about 5 p.m. when Barnes was visiting a neighbor across the street and saw her daughter "walking in the street with a child wrapped in a blanket."

The umbilical cord was still attached and the baby was moving and breathing, Barnes, 52, told police. She rushed mother and child inside and called 911.

When paramedics arrived, the baby was not breathing. He and his mother were taken to Plantation General Hospital where the child was pronounced dead at 6:03 p.m.

At the hospital, the mother refused to be interviewed by a detective "due to her mental instability," a report said. Barnes told police she didn't think her daughter realized she was pregnant.

Reports show the mother had been discharged from Broward Health Medical Center June 29 after spending more than a month under psychological evaluation. While there she had refused prenatal care or medication, the reports said.

"We need to make everybody aware of this event," El Sanadi said. "A single death is a tragedy, but the death of a baby or an unborn fetus is even worse. It makes people think not only how awful the death is but the irresponsible behavior of a pregnant woman."

Barnes said they named the child Jacob. His body was cremated.

"I can still see his face," she said. "He was a beautiful baby. He had a full head of hair."

tealanez@tribpub.com, 954-356-4542 or Twitter @talanez

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