A mother and her boyfriend are facing charges after the woman's 11-month-old son died of fentanyl toxicity.
The baby died in May, officials reported, and on Thursday, police arrested the boy's mother, Elizabeth Sauve, and her boyfriend, Quyen Huynh. Both are charged with manslaughter in the second degree.
According to the Onondaga County District Attorney’s Office in Syracuse, New York, the infant died after ingesting the fentanyl. The district attorney could not confirm whether the boy was given fentanyl by his mother and or her boyfriend or whether he came by it on his own.
Sauve was indicted Thursday evening but is no longer in custody, according to an inmate roster.
Huynh was arraigned Friday morning and remained in the Onondaga County Justice Center as of Friday night.
Related: Once feared, illicit fentanyl is now a drug of choice for many opioid users
In recent years, doctors have seen an uptick in the number of patients being treated for fentanyl addiction. NBC News reported earlier this month that the shift to use the once-feared synthetic compound is worrisome since the drug is up to 50 times stronger than heroin.
In 2018, a report on the national trends in pediatric deaths from prescription and illicit opioids found 8,986 children and adolescent opioid-related fatalities between 1999 and 2016. Children aged 0 to 4 years made up 605, or 6.7%, of those deaths.
According to the report, the implication of the findings was that the opioid epidemic is likely to remain an increasing public health issue amongst youth unless more vigorously acted upon by legislators, public health officials, clinicians, and parents.
