Kid, 5, who brought heroin to school, now caught with crack
TRENTON >> A city boy who took heroin to school in his lunch box last month has been taken away from his family and placed in foster care after a teacher at his school told investigators she found crack cocaine inside his folder this week.
But a Mercer County family court judge late Wednesday shrouded the episode in secrecy when he issued an injunction preventing The Trentonianfrompublishingdetails from a verified child abuse complaint it obtained lawfully. These type of proceedings are normally closed, but The Trentonian was able to obtain a copy of the complaint.
Judge Craig L. Corson’s prior restraint injunction, made orally from the bench late Wednesday, without Trentonian representation present to argue against it, was handed down and served on the newspaper as it prepared to publish a story about a 5-year-old boy who is now in state custody after he was found with drugs at school twice in the last two months.
Deputy Attorney General John Tolleris asked for the prior restraint injunction, a rare measure that usually only comes up in cases of national security. The judge’s ruling prevented the newspaper frompublishing“anyinformation obtained from the verified complaint in any form.”
The Trentonian has withheld information contained in the complaint, filed by the Division of Child Protection and Permanency, until the judge’s order is lifted.
The following account is pieced together from interviews with the boy’s relatives and past reporting. The Trentonian is determining what steps to take to have the injunction dissolved.
The ongoing child custody battle between boy’s mother, Tashawn Ford, and his grandmother, Ernestine Woodward, turned bitter last month when child welfare officials opened an investigation into the boy’s relatives.
The boy’s father, Maurice Leonard, and his paramour, Turia Justice, were charged with child endangerment over the heroin incident in September.
Leonard and Justice, who is not the boy’s mother, posted bail and were free when family members say the crack cocaine was discovered in the boy’s folder this month.
Police first began investigating when the boy’s teacher saw him playing with what she thought were candy wrappers at International Academy of Trenton Charter School.
The teacher told the boy to put away the candy wrapper, confiscating it after the boy pulled them back out. To her surprise, she found out it was a glassine packet of heroin. The boyhad30packetsofheroinin his lunchbox, police said.
The boy was taken to the hospital, tested for opiates, came back clean and was releasedbackintothecustodyof his grandmother.
Then this week, Division of Child Protection and Permanency officials took custody of the boy and placed him in fostercareafterhisteacherfound crack cocaine in his folder at the end of the day Oct. 24, according to family.
The New Jersey Department of Children and Families, which oversees DCP&P, wouldn’t comment on why the boy was allowed to remain with his grandmother after he was found with heroin. In a statement to The Trentonian, a spokesman said the agency is prohibited by law from “commenting on or even confirming whether or not we are involved with a child or family.”
School director Jay Kamau said in a statement released to The Trentonian that it is cooperating with authorities and the New Jersey Division of Child Protection and Permanency in the crack cocaine investigation and takes “this matter very seriously.”
“Incidents like this one remind us of some of the challenges our students face outside of school today,” Kamau said. “They also remind us of the potential we have to make a difference through education.”
Relatives were at Mercer County family court Wednesday for an emergency hearing about whether her 5-year-old boy would remain in state custody and for how long. wasfoundwithdrugsthefirst time last month.
“I went to court to try to get custody of him and the judge and DCPP told me that they didn’t consider it an emergency removal,” she said in an interview prior to the judge handing down the injunction. “Now looked what happened. They’re called‘childprotection’andyou mean to tell me … That’s your job to protect the child.”
In interviews with The Trentonian outside family court on Wednesday, Ford and Woodward leveled accusations at each other.
Woodward contends her grandsononlyhadadarkblue folder in his backpack when he left for school the morning the crack cocaine was found in an aqua blue folder.
She said she doesn’t understand how school officials contend the aqua blue folder belonged to her grandson and thinks this is a set up to remove custody.
Family members said the teacher noticed the drugs in an aqua blue folder at the end of the day as she was putting the folders in students’ book bags.
Woodward told The Trentonian she checked her grandson’s dark blue folder prior to him leaving, even putting his stuff in a new red backpack, and didn’t find drugs.
She even accused Ford of possibly having some role in
CRACK >> PAGE 11