This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2012, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
Two women arrested for drug possession with the intent to distribute allegedly hid heroin behind the head of a 3-month-old baby sitting in a car seat.
Agents came upon the discovery they called "very shocking" during a traffic stop of the suspected drug traffickers.
One woman, 41, of West Valley, and a 27-year-old, of Salt Lake City, were being watched by the Weber-Morgan Narcotics Strike Force after officers obtained evidence about the duo making a "large quantity" delivery from Salt Lake City to Ogden, said Strike Force Lt. Troy Burnett.
Police followed the women in a dark-tinted truck headed north on Interstate 15. The women exited the freeway near 500 South and 500 West in Bountiful, and agents made the traffic stop a block later, Burnett said. Officers found a baby in a car seat in the back with a plastic bag stuffed with 200 tied balloons of heroin behind the girl's head like a pillow.
"The baby's head was resting on the heroin," Burnett said.
The balloons contained 31.8 grams of heroin with a street value of $4,000.
Neither woman would claim the baby, but the 27-year-old admitted that she hid the heroin behind the child's head.
"If we would have known they had a child in the car before this, we probably would have stopped them as soon as possible," Burnett said.
Agents called Division of Child and Family Services, which took custody of the child while the two women were booked into the Weber County jail on suspicion of drug possession with intent to distribute.
DCFS eventually located the infant's parents and learned the 41-year-old woman was the baby's aunt.
Burnett said charges related to child endangerment are being screened by the Davis County Attorney's office.
He said children sometimes are near drugs when their parents are transporting the cargo, but he has never seen this kind of contact in his 10 years in narcotics.
"I've never come across someone who intentionally hid their drugs on children," Burnett said. "I don't have an adjective for what was done in this specific case."
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