Mother Charged With Murder Over Baby’s Fentanyl Overdose Death

Police have filed second-degree murder charges against Riley Tehy Wormington, who is now in the custody of the U.S. Marshals Service after her young child died from fentanyl exposure at her North Carolina home last year.

Newsweek has reached out to the U.S. Marshals Service for comment via email on Sunday afternoon.

The Context

The opioid crisis is one of the most urgent public health challenges in the United States, with synthetic opioids, like fentanyl, responsible for a majority of drug overdose deaths.

President Donald Trump has imposed tariffs, which are currently paused, on Canada and Mexico, citing illegal immigration and the influx of drugs, including fentanyl, as key reasons. After immigration, Trump said the second reasoning for the tariffs “are the drugs—fentanyl and everything else that have come into the country.” He has pledged to enforce border security restricting the flow of people and drugs.

According to data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the country experienced a significant increase in drug overdose deaths over the decades, with more than 700,000 people having died from an opioid overdose. In 2023, synthetic opioids were responsible for 72,776 overdose deaths.

In North Carolina, an average of nine people die each day from fentanyl overdoses, the state’s justice department notes.

A May 2023 study found that pediatric deaths from fentanyl increased “more than 30-fold” between 2013 and 2021. It reported that fentanyl was implicated in 38 percent of fatal pediatric opioid poisonings, 5,194 of the 13,861, between 1999 and 2021.

In 2023, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) reported seizing more than “390 million lethal doses of fentanyl.” The DEA notes that the drug is extremely potent, with 2 milligrams considered a deadly dose.

A Drug Enforcement Administration chemist checks confiscated powder containing fentanyl at the DEA Northeast Regional Laboratory on October 8, 2019, in New York.

DON EMMERT/AFP via Getty Images

What To Know

In a Friday press release, the Mooresville Police Department (MPD) announced that the U.S. Marshals Service arrested Wormington, 23, in Denver on February 18.

Her arrest follows the issuance of several arrest warrants including: “2nd degree murder, felony child abuse, felony possession of a schedule II-controlled substance, felony maintaining a dwelling for controlled substance and possession of drug paraphernalia.”

The arrest comes just after a year since the MPD responded to a “medical call involving a child under two years of age” on February 13, 2024. Despite efforts, the police were unable to save the child.

The department then launched an investigation into the child’s death and found it was a “result of fentanyl toxicity after the child ingested a lethal dose of the drug.” Trace amount of the drug can be fatal, especially for infants.

The MPD said the mother fled to Colorado shortly after giving birth to a second child while the investigation was ongoing.

This has led to subsequent charges regarding her second child, including “felony child abuse, felony possession of a schedule II-controlled substance, felony maintaining a dwelling for controlled substance and possession of drug paraphernalia.”