A Delaware man is being held on $1 million cash bail after being charged with murder in the drug-exposure death of a 5-year-old girl last summer.
Keith Bulloch, 28, was charged with first-degree murder by abuse or neglect, and resisting arrest after he tried to run away.
On July 11, 2023, police reported to Bulloch’s home in Claymont, Del., responding to a 911 call about an “unresponsive and unconscious 5-year-old female,” the New Castle County Police Department said in a statement Thursday.
Officers and EMS personnel attempted to provide first aid to the child, but they were unable to save her.
An autopsy later revealed the cause of death to be “fentanyl and cocaine toxicity,” the police statement said.
Bulloch was the child’s father, the Delaware News Journal reported, though investigators did not confirm that.
Fentanyl exposure among children has soared exponentially over the past three years, according to the U.S. Poison Centers — from 120 cases in kids younger than 6 in 2020, to 539 by 2023. That’s a 5,290% increase since 2016, when there were 10 cases, the poison centers said.
In New York City, a Bronx day-care center owner and a neighbor were charged last September with depraved indifference murder and numerous other counts after 1-year-old Nicholas Feliz-Dominici died from exposure to fentanyl that they had stashed under the floorboards in the nap room. Two others involved in the case pleaded guilty to narcotics charges on Monday.
Across the U.S., children have died in California, Washington State, Delaware, Kentucky and West Virginia, to name a few.
With News Wire Services
