DeLAND, Fla. – Deputies stumbled upon two people passed out on opiates Tuesday morning with an infant in the back seat of their vehicle at a DeLand Circle K, officials with the Volusia County Sheriff’s Office said.
Deputies said they noticed the car at 3:14 a.m. in the East New York Avenue Circle K parking lot because the driver’s door was open.
In the body camera video released by the Volusia County Sheriff’s Office a man and a woman are shown unconscious inside their car. The windows are fogged up in the video, which deputies said was because the car had been sitting for an extended amount of time.
“There’s a baby in there,” one deputy says in the video.
[Watch the body camera video at the top of this story]
The baby, estimated to be 8 months old was a sleep in the back seat, according to deputies. Deputies said the child was sweating profusely and that when the baby woke up, it was clear the baby had not had a diaper change or food in a while.
“The diaper had been leaking for an extended period, which was evident by the infant car seat also being saturated with fluids from the baby's diaper,” deputies wrote in the arrest report.
The man, later identified at Sean Gannon, 33, woke up, after a deputy knocked on the vehicle, and was able to answer some questions. When she came to, the woman, Kimberly Mccaffrey, 34, was confused and didn’t know where she was, deputies said.
A bag that tested positive for opiates was found in the woman’s pocket, and a spent syringe was found with Gannon. The syringe also tested positive for opiates. Deputies said track marks on Gannon indicated intravenous drug use.
[Find out how funding cuts are preventing people from receiving addiction treatment]
Gannon told deputies he drove to the gas station to get coffee for Mccaffrey to help her wake up.
Mccaffrey, the baby's mother, is charged with child neglect and possession of opiates. Gannon is charged with driving with a suspended license and drug possession. Both were booked into the Volusia County Jail.
Deputies contacted Mccaffrey's mother who said "she has been down this road with Kimberly too many times," and refused to take custody of the child.
The child was placed into the care of the Florida Department of Children and Families.
“The opioid epidemic touches innocent lives every day,” a post on the Sheriff’s Office Facebook page reads.
Opioid crisis tapping out Volusia, Flagler resources
Last year, authorities said they found a couple in a similar situation on New Year's Eve in Volusia County. A Florida Highway Patrol trooper found Daniel Kelsey, 32, and Healther Kelsey, 30 dead of a fentanyl overdose along I-4, with their three young children inside the car.
The three children inside this vehicle, now ages 5, 2 and 1, live with Heather's father, Mike Belisle and his wife in the Panhandle.
In 2017, 29 people have died from overdoses in incorporated Volusia County, which does not including cities like Deltona or Daytona Beach, according to Volusia County Sheriff Mike Chitwood.
Earlier this year the only licensed addiction treatment facility in Volusia and Flagler counties, the Stewart-Marchman-Act Behavioral Health facility, donated enough of the overdose-reversing drug Narcan to equip every deputy in Volusia County with Narcan.
Chitwood estimates if overdoses continue at the current rate his deputies will likely save nearly 1,000 people in 2017 from overdosing using Narcan to bring them back from death.