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[Jim Choate <ravage@ssz.com>]

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             POLICE: DRUG-ADDICT MOM KILLED BABY WITH BREAST MILK
                                       
      Powell July 31, 1997
     Web posted at: 10:55 p.m. EDT (0255 GMT)
     
     TUCSON, Arizona (AP) -- Police have charged a woman with murder,
     claiming her breast milk was so full of heroin and methadone that it
     killed her 7-week-old daughter.
     
     The father was also charged with murder for not intervening,
     authorities said.
     
     "It's true with any form of child abuse that it's preventable, but
     this one seems to be more preventable. It seems to be more of a
     conscious choice," Tucson Police Detective Sgt. Brett Klein said
     Thursday.
     
     Doctors put Eve Powell into the intensive care unit after she was
     born on May 16 because she was dependent on methadone, the
     opium-based drug used to help wean heroin addicts.
     
     Before sending Eve home from the hospital a month later, medical
     workers warned the baby's 24-year-old mother, Amoret Powell, that
     resuming her heroin habit while breast-feeding could kill the baby,
     police said.
     
     But on July 10, tiny Eve was rushed to another hospital,suffering
     from severe oxygen deprivation. She died the next day.
     
     On Wednesday, authorities charged Amoret Powell with first-degree
     murder, alleging that she killed her daughter by giving her
     drug-filled breast milk.
     
     Police found used syringes and other drug paraphernalia in her home,
     and she admitted using heroin after Eve's birth, Klein said.
     
     Test results from Eve's body are pending, but doctors say the
     heroin-methadone combination can cause the oxygen deprivation that
     killed the baby.
     
     Eve's father, Robin Johnson, 33, also was charged with murder
     because the death resulted from child abuse and he did nothing to
     stop it, Klein said. Each is being held on $1 million bond.
     
     Powell is not the first mother to face a murder charge fornursing a
     child while using drugs. A jury in Bakersfield, California,
     deadlocked on a murder charge but convicted a woman of child
     endangerment after she nursed while using methamphetamine. Another
     woman in Los Angeles pleaded guilty to child endangerment for also
     nursing while using methamphetamine.
     
     The Associated Press contributed to this report.  Search for related
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