WEST PALM BEACH, FL — A Florida man was charged with multiple felonies after he used a child as a drug mule and a makeshift shield in the same incident.
Fredrick James isn't much of a role model to the younger kids in the neighborhood. In fact, he is in dutch with authorities after he dragged a nearby five-year-old into his world of drugs and fucktardery.
It was just another Friday on October 12th. Hookers were plying their trade, crackheads were offering up cheeseburgers, and West Palm Beach police had successfully bought heroin from James the day before and were looking to put him in cuffs.
Nothing new to see.
But when they served a search warrant at James' apartment, he did the unthinkable, grabbing his five-year-old son and using him as a shield "by wrapping his arms around the child and carrying him against his chest."
What he intended to accomplish by this defensive maneuver is unclear. Maybe he thought that the cops couldn't arrest him, like they were playing tag and the kid was home base, or something equally as ill-thought-out and asinine. Maybe he's just the kind of selfish asshole whose instinctive reflex is to take a hostage.
What is clear is that he does not give the first goddamn about the kid.
That became even more apparent— crystal-clear, I would go so far as to say— when authorities found that he had hidden heroin and fentanyl "inside the child's shirt and buttocks." That's right, folks, Fredrick James gave his son a prison wallet. Or damned close to it.
And fentanyl is the last thing you want in your prison wallet. Up to a hundred times as potent as heroin, fentanyl and its analogs are so strong that they pose a risk to emergency responders just through incidental contact. It has caused numerous deaths in this manner, and even more non-fatal overdoses... and that's adults.
Authorities followed protocol and decontaminated the kid immediately, scrubbing him down in a neighbor's shower. Two other kids in the house were transported to a hospital for decontamination.
I'm sure that wasn't traumatic at all.
James drew multiple charges over the incident, including possession of heroin, fentanyl, and marijuana, selling drugs near a church or school, tampering with evidence, resisting arrest and, of course, child endangerment.
He was released the next day on a $74,000 bond.