Mom faces charges in child’s death
Prosecutors allege woman gave daughter methadone to help the 2-year-old sleep
WEST CHESTER >> Following a two-year-long investigation into the death of a 2-year-old East Fallowfield girl, Chester County Detectives filed homicide charges against the child’s mother, a former heroin addict who allegedly would give her daughter methadone to help her sleep.
Police charged Tiana Marie Johnson with involuntary manslaughter, endangering the welfare of children, and recklessly endangering another person on Jan. 11, according to court documents. She had been the subject of the investigation for several months and had given police several different versions of events surrounding her daughter’s death by drug ingestion, sometimes offering inconsistent and implausible explanations.
Johnson, 32, of East Fallowfield was arraigned by Magisterial District Judge Nancy Gill and released on $100,000 bail, unsecured. She is scheduled to appear for a preliminary hearing on the charges on March 9.
The case — which was investigated by nowretired Detective James Ciliberto and Detective Gerald Davis of the D.A.’s Child Abuse Unit — began on Aug. 31, 2020, with the report of the death of a 2-year-old girl at her home in a single-family home subdivision off Doe Run Road south of Coatesville.
According to the arrest affidavit, the cause of death for the girl — whose name was Phaith Nalise Lee Edwards Johnson — was not immediately determined after an autopsy by Dr. Erica Williams at Chester County Hospital. Hair samples and blood taken from the girl were later analyzed, and on Oct. 12, then-county Coroner Dr. Christina VandePol certified that the cause of death was methadone intoxication.
Methadone is a controlled substance used to treat opiate addiction. Johnson was on a threeyear-long treatment program for her addiction at the Coatesville Comprehensive Treatment Center, given a daily dose of 140 milligrams of methadone. That dosage was given to her in a secured lock box for safety.
In an interview with the detectives following the coroner’s findings, Johnson said that on the day she found her daughter unresponsive, she had put the lock box on a kitchen counter while waiting for a ride to the center in Caln. She suggested that her daughter must have somehow gotten access to the lock box and ingested the remaining methadone in the bottle that was to be returned that day.
“She had no other explanation for the victim’s
ingestion,” the affidavit states. No one else in the home uses methadone or has an opiate addiction, she said.
In later interviews, however, Johnson suggested to the investigators that her daughter could have sipped the remnants of her methadone dosage from the cup that she used to dilute the drug in, or that she might have accidentally contaminated the child’s pacifier with the drug.
Johnson also denied that she had used illegal opiates over the months after her daughter’s birth. Checking records at the CTC, however, the investigators found that Johnson had tested positive for opiates, fentanyl, and amphetamine on 29 times between July 2018, when Phaith was born, and Aug. 30, 2020.
In an interview in July 2022 with another patient at CTC, the man told investigators that he used to ride in a car to and from the center with Johnson. On one occasion, the man said Johnson told him that she would dip her finger in her methadone and apply the drug to the child’s gums to get her to go to sleep. She said she had done that “many times,” according to the affidavit.
Although the man reported that others were in the car with him and Johnson when she made the admission, interviews with those people saw them denying hearing the conversation.
In their conclusion, Ciliberto and Davis said that the only way the victim could have obtained the methadone that killed her was from the supply that Johnson brought into her home and that the forensic analysis of the child’s blood showed that at least a week prior to her death she had ingested methadone, morphine and heroin.
Her actions, they said, were negligent and reckless — factors in considering the charge of involuntary manslaughter.
Johnson is being represented by defense attorney Melissa McCafferty of Coatesville. The case is assigned to Senior Deputy District Attorney Erin O’Brien of the D.A.’s Child Abuse Unit.