LEFT: Haddix Mulkey, baby murdered by daycare provider. RIGHT: Lori Conley, the daycare provider who murdered the child
By Theodore Shoebat
There are so many stories like this. I wish it were not the case, but it is. Here is the report:
The mother of an infant who authorities say died of poisoning from an overdose of Benadrylexpressed feelings of “shock” on Sunday after learning that police had charged the child’s daycare provider with murder.
Katie Mulkey said she placed her 8-month-old son Haddix Mulkey in the care of Lori Conley, a woman who authorities are describing as an unlicensed childcare provider. The child died on May 13 for reasons that were then unknown and she told ABC News that she was “in the dark” about what had happened to her son until an investigating detective told her on Friday that Conley had been arrested for fatally administering a dose of the allergy medication Benadryl.
“I was in complete shock,” she told ABC News by phone. “He was just learning to crawl.”
Police released a statement saying that they arrived at Conley’s, who was baby-sitting eight children at the time, to follow up on a call about an unresponsive infant. The child, Mulkey’s son, was transported to Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Columbus, Ohio, where he was pronounced dead. It took three weeks for the coroner’s office to produce a toxicology report. Released on Friday, the report states that Haddix died from the lethal dose of Benadryl. Conley was charged with murder shortly thereafter.
“I want people to know the good things about my son. That he loved ice cream and that he had just gotten his first tooth,” Mulkey said. “Parents are supposed to go before their children. My baby went too early.”
Lt. Ron Wright of the Reynoldsburg Police Departmenttold the Columbus Dispatch that Conley was not running a licensed daycare center, but was babysitting to support three teenage children of her own. He told the paper that attempts to revive Haddix en route to the hospital failed, and that Conley told detectives that she gave the baby an adult dose of Benadryl “to help him sleep.”
Conley was arraigned Saturday in Franklin County Municipal Court and bond was set at $750,000. She was held in the Franklin County Jail. If she makes bond, she was ordered not to have contact with children, although she was permitted contact with her own children under supervision. Court records did not say whether she entered a plea and do not list an attorney for her. ABC News’ attempts to reach her were unsuccessful.
A request for comment from the Reynoldsburg Police Department and from Pfizer, the maker of Benadryl, were not immediately returned.
Benadryl, a popular brand name antihistamine medication, sometimes causes drowsiness in adults. A dosing guide on Benadryl’s website recommends that children under the age of six not use the adult version of the drug. There is also a children’s version of the drug, but the website recommends that it not be given to children under 2 years old.
An obituary for Haddix posted on the website for the Cotner Funeral Home in in Reynoldsburg, Ohio, mentions that he left behind “a broken-hearted mommy.”