ROSS COUNTY, Ohio — A Ross County mother charged in connection with the overdose death of her 1-year-old child was sentenced to prison today.
According to the Ross County Prosecutor, Amanda Lowery received 9 to 13 1/2 years in prison after pleading guilty to involuntary manslaughter and felony child endangerment.
On Friday, August 20, 2021, 9-1-1 received a call from Lowery who said her son was dead.
Deputies with medics from Huntington Township responded to the home in the 2500 block of Sullivan Road.
Upon arrival, deputies rushed to begin CPR. Medics transported the boy to Adena Regional Medical Center, where doctors said he was dead on arrival.
Initially, Lowery told investigators that a severe respiratory infection led to the 1-year-old’s death. She told the police that her son had been sick for nearly a week. The family revealed to the Guardian that a nurse practitioner saw the boy and his twin brother at urgent care in Chillicothe. The doctor, the family said, diagnosed them with ear infections and upper respiratory issues. By Thursday evening, the boy’s mother said the child was having difficulty breathing. The following morning, around 5 a.m., she awoke to find her son unresponsive. Detective Eddie Wheaton of the Ross County Sheriff’s Office called the one-year-old’s death suspicious.
The Ross County Coroner’s Office took the boy’s body for a forensic autopsy. In that autopsy, officials found the child died with a massive amount of Suboxone in his system, the family said.
A source close to the family told the Guardian that the mother confessed that an older child got into the medication and dumped it in the playpen where the one-year-old was. A call for help would not occur until after the child was found not breathing.
According to SAMHSA (Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration), “Buprenorphine (Suboxone) is a medication approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to treat opioid use disorder (OUD) as a medication-assisted treatment (MAT).”