Child found dead after ingesting fentanyl-laced pill while alone in hotel room, police say

LAS VEGAS (FOX5/Gray News) – A child died after ingesting a fentanyl-laced pill while alone in a hotel room, according to the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department.

An arrest report said fire officials requested assistance around 3:30 a.m. Tuesday at The Orleans Hotel after finding a young child who was unresponsive by the first-floor elevators, FOX5 reports.

The child was unable to be revived and was pronounced dead at the hotel.

According to police, the child’s mother, Amber Mitchell, left her children in a hotel room while she was downstairs playing poker.

Mitchell told police she returned to the room around 1 a.m. to check on the kids and noticed one child seemed “really groggy, as though he was still sleepy” when he went to the bathroom.

She told officers the boy struggled to walk to the bathroom and noticed his eyes were constricted. She thought he may have taken a pill a friend left behind in the bathroom.

Mitchell told authorities she put the boy back to sleep and went downstairs again to the poker table. When she returned to the room around 3:30 a.m., she saw the child had blood coming from his mouth.

The report states Mitchell told police that a friend she met while playing poker at another casino had brought the pills. She laid 10 pills out on the bathroom sink counter to take a photo because her friend wanted to sell them to make money.

Detectives from the police’s narcotics team responded to the hotel and determined the pills tested positive for fentanyl.

Detectives wrote in the report that it’s “likely that Mitchell would have been aware of this as it was obvious the pills she was selling were not from a pharmacy.”

After the interview was completed, the report states that Mitchell said she felt guilty about what happened and that she doesn’t “deserve children.”

She added, according to the report, “I was irresponsible. I may as well have given them the pill because I wasn’t watching them. I failed them, and I’m guilty for not being there.”

When asked why she did not seek medical attention for the child, according to the report, she that she is “just a mother, not a doctor. I didn’t know Oxy could kill him. I don’t know about fentanyl.”

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