3MO Died From Fentanyl Overdose, Father Who Wanted The “Strong Shit” Asks Judge For Mental Health Diversion

[Sugar Cookie]

A San Jose man has been charged in the death of his baby daughter, whose body was found in an apartment littered with opioids earlier this year, the Santa Clara County District Attorney's Office said Friday.

An autopsy showed that 3-month-old Phoenix died from ingesting methamphetamine and fentanyl in May.

David Anthony Castro, 38, is charged with felony child neglect and possession of a controlled substance, a misdemeanor.

On May 13, San Jose police officers found Phoenix unconscious at a home on Spinnaker Walkway. Fentanyl, broken glass pipes and aluminum foil were found in the kitchen area of the apartment, prosecutors said.

A baby bottle containing liquid was located next to the glass pipes on the kitchen counter. Police also found Narcan, used to revive people from drug overdoses, the district attorney's office said.

Phoenix was later pronounced dead.

The mother of the infant was not at home when the baby died. She died of an overdose last month, prosecutors said.

San Jose father charged in infant daughter's fatal fentanyl overdose last May

A San Jose man has been charged in the death of his baby daughter, whose body was found in an apartment littered with opioids earlier this year, the Santa Clara County District Attorney's Office said Friday.

www.cbsnews.com

 

[thatsmallgrl]

The mother of the infant was not at home when the baby died. She died of an overdose last month, prosecutors said.

Phoenix didn't have a chance. Mom died of an overdose and dad is a druggie too. Incredibly sad.

 

[Sugar Cookie]

So Gabriel and Anthony's deaths taught California nothing

Soft touch California lawmakers boasted about their success in slashing child removals just days before a newborn baby died from a fentanyl and meth overdose in the care of her drug-addicted father.

Baby Phoenix was too young to eat solid food when she was poisoned by the drugs found alongside her bottle in May at the San Jose home of David Castro, despite repeated warnings from neighbors.

Older children had previously been removed from a man with eight earlier drug convictions, but Santa Clara County had recently changed its 'threshold' for removal, citing a commitment to 'racial justice.'

Officials insisted they were unaware of 'a single example where a child was determined to be '"unsafe," and subsequently left in the care of the offending parent.' Two weeks later, Phoenix was dead.

There's no reason why this baby had to die,' neighbor Nancy Wetherington told Mercury News.

'CPS or police or someone should have stepped in and taken this baby. How did this baby skate through, a beautiful baby girl?

The number of children removed from their families had dropped from more than 60 in August 2020 to fewer than 20 in February 2022 as the new orthodoxy took hold in Santa Clara.

By the time of Phoenix's birth, the county was under investigation after worried social workers raised the alarm about progressive lawyers overriding child welfare decisions.

State social services demanded answers after county whistleblowers highlighted multiple cases of children removed by law enforcement and then quickly returned.


Those children would be 'immediately placed back in the care of the unsafe parent' by the county's Department of Family and Children's Services after intervention by the county counsel's office,' it was claimed.

Steve Baron, who worked on hundreds of child abuse and neglect cases in the county, called the findings a 'scandal.'


'It seems like the county counsel is making decisions that really relate to the safety of the child,' he told the East Bay Times.

'And they're not qualified to do that. That's not their role.'

The county told the state its change of approach was 'based on increasingly clear evidence demonstrating the significant and lasting trauma children experience with even brief periods of removal from their family'.

Dan Little, the director of the county's Department of Family and Children's Services had told his social workers in 2021 they were now expected to show commitment 'to racial justice and to healing the historical wounds underlying disproportionate representation of children of color in the child welfare system'.

County executive James Williams, who was lead counsel until July admitted on Saturday that 'the county dropped the ball'.


'My opinion is that baby Phoenix shouldn't have been in the care of the father – period.'

He confessed that the county had botched its assessment of Castro's fitness to look after Phoenix, but refused to say if counsel had overruled social workers in the case.

'There's extraordinary passion, I think on all sides, he added.

'What are the best things to do to take care of children and their families?

'We want to improve, we want to learn, we are deeply troubled. There's nobody I've talked to who isn't incredibly affected by the death of a three-month-old baby.'

Baron, a member of the Santa Clara County Child Abuse Prevention Council, said keeping families together is an 'idealistic goal,' but social service agencies are 'rolling the dice on the safety of the child.'

Wetherington warned other children may fall victim to the progressive policy.

'For every child that's dead, how many children are left in very dangerous, or high risk situations?' she demanded.

Baby died after counsel overruled social workers for 'racial justice'

Baby Phoenix was too young to eat solid food when she was poisoned by the drugs found alongside her bottle at the San Jose home of David Castro, despite repeated warnings from neighbors.

www.dailymail.co.uk

 

[runninfawn]

another baby dead cuz of drugs.......... grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr ...

 

[Sugar Cookie]

Phoenix

 

[Sugar Cookie]

She was such a cutie Justice For Phoenix Castro

 

[Sugar Cookie]

Lawyers for Baby Phoenix Castro’s father, facing felony child endangerment charges for her fentanyl overdose death two years ago, are asking the court to allow him to enter a mental health diversion program instead of face a jail sentence — a request prosecutors plan to vehemently fight.

David Castro, with a long history of drug use, has been in Santa Clara County jail awaiting trial since he was arrested in 2023. He had woken up on his living room couch to find his 3-month-old daughter, who had fallen asleep on his chest the night before, face down on the couch unresponsive and not breathing. Her pink-flowered onesie was covered in remnants of fentanyl.

“We’re extremely concerned that if David Castro is granted mental health diversion, that he’ll soon be out of custody and endangering the community with no accountability for causing the death of his child,” said Assistant District Attorney James Gibbons-Shapiro, who also chairs the county’s Child Abuse Prevention Council.

The diagnosis outlined in the defense filing — “adjustment disorder with mixed anxiety and depressed mood” — is not serious enough to consider dropping the charges, which defense lawyers are asking for if he successfully completes the program, he said. And it’s not an excuse for Castro to turn to illegal drugs instead of doctor-prescribed medications, either, he added.

“You have to take several very big leaps to link this kind of a diagnosis to something that would be a significant factor in causing the death of a child,” Gibbons-Shapiro said. “We just don’t accept that someone who’s caused the death of a child in this way by his actions should not be held responsible.”

The May 2023 death of baby Phoenix — and the investigation by the Bay Area News Group that followed — forced a reckoning at the county’s child welfare agency that had released the infant from the hospital into the hands of her drug abusing father despite dire warnings from social worker Matthew Kraft that she could die in his care. Her two older siblings had been taken away from the parents already because of severe neglect, Kraft told superiors, and neither Castro nor his wife had followed through on parenting and drug treatment programs to get their children back.

In the court application for the mental health diversion program filed late last month, Castro’s deputy alternate public defender Mishya Singh wrote that the 39-year-old suffered a difficult childhood. He barely knew his father and his mother was often homeless and drank too much and favored his twin brother, the court file said. Castro survived cancer at 22 and the amputation of his toes, which spurred his drug use, and the suicide of his mother when he was 27, the court documents say. At times, he felt suicidal himself.

“All these critical life events caused distress and impairment in his personal, occupational and social functioning, making it difficult in adjusting after these series of events,” the filing said.

Symptoms of the adjustment disorder diagnosis “were likely present” when his daughter died, the court filing said.

Gibbons-Shapiro countered, however, that the mental health diversion program is more suitable for conditions more serious than Castro’s depression and anxiety. He also said that Castro has not proven to be a good candidate for a voluntary rehabilitation program, especially because “his failures to do the things to get his other children back are a big part of that story.”

Continue reading

Father of Baby Phoenix who died of fentanyl overdose wants felony dropped; mental health program instead

The May 2023 death of baby Phoenix — and the investigation by the Bay Area News Group that followed — forced a reckoning at the county’s child welfare agency that had released the infan…

www.mercurynews.com

 

[Sugar Cookie]

Baby Phoenix died at home the day before Mother’s Day with fentanyl powder splotched on her pink onesie. A San Jose police officer who tried to save the 3-month-old infant on May 13, 2023, said when he picked her up to perform CPR, the officer felt like he was “holding a doll.”

The baby’s mother, Emily DeLaCerda, screamed, “my baby is dead,” according to new court documents filed by Santa Clara County prosecutors.

Phoenix’s father, David Anthony Castro, still had a stash of fentanyl stored inside a Lego toy box in the San Jose home. In the hours leading up to his daughter’s death, the father had sent text messages to his drug dealer asking for “strong sh*t.”

At 6:36 p.m. on May 12, 2023, Castro texted his dealer, “You got that strong s**t? Let me know.”

Phoenix was poisoned by a toxic combination of methamphetamine and fentanyl, a medical examiner’s autopsy concluded.

Castro, 39, appeared in court Tuesday to face felony child endangerment charges. His defense attorney requested that the judge divert the case out of criminal court and into mental health diversion. If Judge Meghan Piano agrees, Castro would be sent to a mental health treatment center instead of prison.

Prosecutors are fighting Castro’s motion. “Defendant now seeks to avoid accountability for his deliberate actions by filing this motion for Mental Health Diversion. Defendant’s behavior and choices led to Baby Phoenix’s environment being so toxic and so dangerous, that it actually killed her,” Deputy District Attorney Maria Gershenovich wrote in court document filed last week.

Gershenovich wrote, “Defendant has purposefully squandered every single opportunity at treatment, clearly demonstrating he does not care to change his behavior and address his addiction and mental health. He also actively worked to deceive anyone who attempted to hold him accountable in treatment, for social workers, to dependency court, to law enforcement. Defendant now wants this court to believe that somehow this time will be different. It will not. What (Castro) is actually doing is requesting an opportunity to erase this conduct from his life and his history, while Baby Phoenix is gone forever.”

Castro’s defense attorney said her client was diagnosed with adjustment disorder, opioid use disorder, amphetamine use disorder, and alcohol use disorder. The defense argues that the father’s mental disorders — primarily addictions — make him suitable for mental health diversion.

Prosecutors argue that Castro’s history of resisting drug treatment and lying to county officials make the father extremely unlikely to comply within the court’s mental health diversion system.

Castro and his deceased girlfriend, DeLaCerda, lost custody of their two older children in the summer of 2021 and in February 2022. They were placed in protective custody after both of their parents were arrested for child endangerment due to unsafe conditions in the home.

After losing custody of his two older children, Castro failed to work with county officials, accept resources, or answer phone calls from social workers “despite the risk of never getting his children back. His lack of effort is well documented,” Gershenovich wrote.

Read complete article here

https://www.kron4.com/news/bay-area/baby-phoenix-castros-father-asks-judge-for-mental-health-diversion/

He is blaming the dead mother for the baby's death.

 

[Sugar Cookie]

Just let him go ... with a big bag of fentanyl and nature will take it's course.

 

[Busy Bee]

If they can’t just let him go off with the big bag of drugs, just put him in prison and let him do “ mental health” sessions by Zoom. That way he won’t have as much access to the drugs, he won’t be able to make any new victims! He will have lots of time to devote to his mental health! Who ever signed off on giving back the baby should be charged right along with him!! I’m sorry he had a rough childhood, but why keep letting him do that to his own children?