compiled by Patrick H. Moore
As children in school — at least when I was a child in school so long ago — we were taught about “America the Beautiful”, a land of bountiful opportunity where through the dint of hard work, honesty and keeping one’s nose clean, we could all elevate ourselves and our families and take our place on the great mandala of the Manifest Destiny. Sure, we learned about some of the bad stuff — particularly slavery. We never heard a word, however, about the “kinky dark land” in which some of us dwell. For example, we were never taught that the babysitter just might inject our beloved youngster with a “speedball”, i.e., a lethal combination of heroin and cocaine. Yet that’s exactly what happened to 9-month-old Milton Rojas in Philadelphia last year when his babysitters, Oscar Sanchez-Rivera, 24, and Viameri Santana-Berrios, 27, allegedly injected him repeatedly with the deadly combination. The Daily Mail Reporter writes:
A couple have been accused of killing a nine-month-old baby boy by injecting him with heroin and cocaine.
Oscar Sanchez-Rivera, 24, and Viameri Santana-Berrios, 27, were babysitting the boy when he died from a drug overdose.
Doctors found needle marks on his hands and feet as well as undigested heroin and cocaine in his body.
The surprising details of the baby boy’s death were described at a preliminary hearing in Philadelphia where the judge bound Sanchez-Rivera over for trial on murder charges after a medical examiner testified that the young victim, Milton Rojas, had so many drugs in his body that he likened him to a drug mule, i.e., someone who smuggles drugs for a living. Although the analogy is not quite on point, the general idea is clear: the baby boy was full of narcotics.
After a five hour hearing concerning the circumstances of the boy’s death, Sanchez-Rivera’s girlfriend Santana-Berrios was bound over on third-degree murder charges .
Paramedic Dale Schroder testified that he had been called to the home last July after the baby was reported as being unresponsive. Santana-Berrios led him to a bedroom where he saw Sanchez-Rivera standing over the body of a baby who was naked and lying on a towel on the bed. Schroder explained to the court that he recognised ‘track marks’ normally found on drug addicts when he was trying to revive the baby, who was cool to the touch, pale, and unresponsive.
Schroeder’s efforts to revive the child failed. He and his partner then took the child to St. Christopher’s Hospital for Children, in Philadephia, where he was pronounced dead. By the time they reached the hospital, little Milton’s internal body temperature was already too low to register on a rectal thermometer.
According to medical examiner Edwin Lieberman, the examination revealed eight needle marks on the baby’s feet and hands as well as undigested heroin and cocaine in his stomach. Lieberman stated that he had never seen this level of drugs in a child before.
Both Sanchez-Rivera and Santana-Berrios had told the detectives that the baby, who had a history of breathing problems, fell asleep and began snoring before it stopped breathing and turned blue. According to the Philadelphia Inquirer, the defense attorneys strenuously contested the charges at the preliminary hearing. Sanchez-Rivera’s attorney, Michael Medway, insisted that it made no sense for him to inject and kill a child that he and his girlfriend were only watching for her cousin. ”Why? Because the kid is too much of a pain?” Medway asked.
But the prosecutors have alleged that the child died within six hours of being injected while in their care:
“For 39-1/2 hours, this baby was in the care of these two people. Take a look at the math and at the level of care and how they acted. The body has track marks. Track marks on a baby.”
The Municipal Court Judge James M. DeLeon ordered Sanchez-Rivera to be held on the murder charge as well as conspiracy and child endangerment charges. Santana-Berrios, a mother with two children of her own, had her bail set at $150,000 based on the lesser third-degree murder charges.
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I’ve never seen a case like this before and am somewhat surprised by the sheer monstrousness of what was done to the child. Although Sanchez-Rivera’s attorney claims that injecting the child makes no sense, there’s little doubt that the heroin would keep him quiet so that he would not be a pain for the babysitters from hell.