Docs: Mom suspected of injecting young kids with heroin called it "sleeping juice"

TACOMA, Wash. -- A Washington state mother is charged with giving her three small children heroin after a boy told investigators his mother used a needle to inject him and his sisters with “feel good medicine” to help them sleep.

State Child Protective Services investigators became involved after receiving a report of heroin use at the Spanaway home 24-year-old Ashlee Hutt shared with the children’s father, Mac Leroy McIver. The children, ages 6, 4 and 2, were removed from the home last year.

According to a probable cause affidavit obtained by CBS affiliate KIRO, Child Protective Services responded to the couple’s home after someone reported seeing Hutt injecting her children with a substance. Child welfare officials found the children living in a home filled with rat droppings, drug needles and heroin, the document said.

The eldest child reportedly told CPS investigators his mother and father gave him and his sisters the “feel good medicine” he described as a white powder mixed with water, and his parents used a needle to inject them with the substance.

“Some of the statements [the children] made were very disturbing about how they would get sleeping juice to go to sleep and it was injected into them by needle,” Pierce County Sheriff’s Department spokesman Detective Ed Troyer said, according to the station.

After being injected, the children reportedly said they fell asleep, according to the affidavit.

Child Protective Services began an investigation covering the period between May and November 2015, reports KIRO, during which time Hutt and McIver are suspected of giving heroin to all three of the children.

Testing reportedly showed traces of low levels of what was believed to be heroin in two of the children, but in at least one case the level was below the threshold to confirm the drug was in the child’s body, the station reports. One child tested negative.

Puncture marks and bruising consistent with needle injections were also reportedly found on the children’s bodies.

The Pierce County Prosecutor’s Office says Hutt was charged Monday with unlawful delivery of a controlled substance to a child, criminal mistreatment and child assault. McIver was charged with the same crimes in September.

Online court records show both Hutt and McIver remain in custody. Their lawyers didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

The station reports both have pleaded not guilty