The pair of Hillsboro parents frantically called 911 in March and asked the dispatcher if it was OK to “give a baby Narcan,” according to court papers.
Though reluctant to explain why he needed the information at first, the father eventually admitted that his 2-year-old daughter had swallowed fentanyl, Washington County prosecutors say. According to court papers, the mother had stashed pills among cookies and snacks in a fanny pack in the backseat of the couple’s car – within reach of the girl – after they stopped to shop at the Dollar Tree on Southwest Walker Road and then headed for a babysitter’s house in Beaverton.
Police arrived where the car pulled over to find the toddler not breathing and with no pulse as she lay sprawled across a baby blanket on the ground next to the family car. Her parents, who prosecutors say had started the day smoking fentanyl purchased in downtown Portland, screamed out “She needs her stomach pumped!”
The girl survived, thanks to the multiple doses of naloxone — the generic name for Narcan — that rescuers administered. And now Bret Mitchell Hollmann, 30, and Megan Elizabeth Meek, 27, are facing trial under accusations of criminal mistreatment and second-degree assault of their daughter. They’ve pleaded not guilty.
The case is one of three moving forward in Washington County against parents or other adults whom authorities say are responsible for killing or nearly killing their children with fentanyl since last year. Two more cases in which youngsters overdosed on the ultra-potent synthetic opioid are headed to grand jury for possible charges in Multnomah County within the next week, Portland police have said.
The cases are proceeding as Portland police on Thursday made a bombshell revelation: nine children in the city overdosed on fentanyl this past summer and five of them died. The overdose victims include three 1-year-olds, a 2-year-old, a 4-year-old and a 5-year-old, and the rest are teenagers.
The announcement was issued days after Portland Commissioner Rene Gonzalez tweeted that one of those children – a 15-month-old – was found overdosing and choking on possibly opiate-contaminated aluminum foil in what turned out to be the parking garage of the Southeast Hawthorne Safeway, where her parents had parked their car. Those parents had not been arrested, police said Tuesday.
The nine children who overdosed just from fentanyl – plus a baby who overdosed from THC – over a three-month period in Portland this summer is greater than the number who overdosed in the city during the previous three years: 2020, 2021 and 2022 combined.
News of the overdoses arrived as Oregonians confront a spiraling crisis at the center of political debate over the state’s approach to drug use and treatment.
One study this week made a big splash when it found that Oregon’s controversial Measure 110 – a first-of-its-kind drug decriminalization law that took effect in 2021 – didn’t lead to a faster increase in overdose death rates when compared to other states. That’s according to data in the measure’s first year.
But that study appears at odds with at least one other study that concluded Measure 110 specially led to an increase in overdose deaths – and that conclusion holds even when looking at data from other states.
Nine months into this year, the number of drug overdose deaths in Multnomah County appears to have surpassed the number for all of last year. According to the county, 510 people died from overdoses in 2022.
So far this year, 516 people -- including 11 children -- are confirmed or suspected to have died from overdoses, with toxicology test results still pending for some. Of those confirmed fatal overdoses in 2023, an increasing portion were caused by fentanyl – about 80%.
The Clackamas County Sheriff’s Office said Thursday it doesn’t have any information offhand of children who had overdosed in its jurisdiction this year. The Washington County Sheriff’s Office said in addition to the 2-year-old girl whose Hillsboro parents called 911 from the car, three teens overdosed in the county this year, including two 17-year-olds who died.
Portland police on Thursday offered few details into the circumstances of each of the nine fentanyl overdoses in the city this summer. Capt. Jake Jensen, who is part of the police unit overseeing narcotics, said those who died included children excited about their first day of kindergarten or riding their bike the day before they died.
“One dead kid is one dead kid too many,” Jensen said. “We’re holding these people accountable for allowing kids to overdose.”
Portland Police Capt. Jake Jensen said the city saw 10 overdoses among children this summer, including nine from fentanyl. “These numbers are astonishing and absolutely unacceptable," he said on Thursday.Catalina Gaitán/The Oregonian
Police would not say which of the nine cases were referred to the district attorney’s office, nor would they identify the people involved, citing open investigations.
Jensen said the nine overdoses happened between June 15 and Sept. 22 and fell within two categories: children in living rooms, cars and kitchens too young to understand what they were doing and adolescents who sought out drugs off the street and took them at parties or inside a bedroom.
A 3-year-old and two 1-year-olds overdosed in June after they were exposed to fentanyl “left unsecured in their homes,” Jensen said.
He urged adult drug-users to not use substances in front of children or in areas where they play and to lock drugs where kids can’t access them. He also implored teens to not accept drugs from friends or purchase them off the street, as there is no guarantee what they might contain.
In the Portland area and nationwide, the number of child fentanyl overdoses has been snowballing – and it appears that very young children are dying at faster growing rates than adolescents. But teens are dying far more often. One study found that deaths that began to surge in 2018 increased six-fold among children under age 5, compared to deaths among teens 15 to 19, which tripled. The study also found that more than 1,500 children died from overdoses in 2021, and 133 of them were under the age of 5.
In New York City, a day care provider and a relative who lived in her home have been charged with murder, after a 1-year-old died from an overdose and two other children ages 8 months and 2 years overdosed but survived earlier this month. Police said they found mass quantities of fentanyl in the home.
Back in Oregon, Washington County prosecutors also have charged a 28-year-old man with a long list of crimes, including criminal mistreatment, for allegedly giving a 12-year-old girl who’d run away from home methamphetamine, heroin and fentanyl, which they both smoked behind a dumpster in 2022. Prosecutors say she overdosed but survived, spent a few days in the hospital and then more time in in-patient treatment.
The man – James Leland Tijerina – was supposed to go to trial next week, but he now has a warrant out for his arrest because he didn’t show up to a court date this month.
Bret Hollmann, the Hillsboro dad charged with the overdose of his 2-year-old daughter, also is scheduled to go to trial next month. The trial of the girl’s mother, Megan Meek, is scheduled for next year. Court papers paint a portrait of a couple deep in the throes of addiction – stating there were fentanyl pills and shavings scattered around the back of their car, including underneath the girl’s car seat and in the area just below where her feet would rest.
After Beaverton police responded to find Hollman’s daughter with no pulse, they administered two doses of Narcan and revived her.
Once at Providence St. Vincent’s Medical Center, prosecutors say those first doses of life-saving spray wore off and the multiple pills the girl allegedly swallowed overtook her. She survived only because medical staff put her on a day-long Narcan IV drip to fend off additional overdoses, prosecutors say.
Court papers say meanwhile, Hollmann was caught smoking opiates in the hospital’s bathroom. After a grand jury indicted the parents in May, prosecutors say the couple avoided apprehension for more than a week until someone spotted them slumped over in their car in the drive-thru of the Sonic burger fast-food restaurant in Hillsboro and summoned authorities. Police say both appeared high on opiates.
-- Aimee Green; agreen@oregonian.com; @o_aimee
-- Catalina Gaitán, cgaitan@oregonian.com, @catalinagaitan_
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