The parents of a 16-month-old baby who died of fentanyl poisoning in February were charged with murder in Catawba County, North Carolina last week.
Lucas Shayne Scronce and Jennifer Denise Clay are charged in connection to the February 7 incident in Newton when deputies from the Catawba County Sheriff’s Office responded to Clay’s home and found Ivy Clay, just 16 months old unresponsive.
The autopsy, released on June 18, showed that Ivy died from fentanyl toxicity, which changed the manner of her death to homicide.
Investigators believed that the child ingested fentanyl in Clay’s home, which led prosecutors to charge Clay and Scronce with murder.
Catawba County Sheriff Don Brown said in a statement that the sheriff’s office asked the District Attorney’s office “to hold Ivy’s parents fully accountable for her murder.”
Investigators charged Scronce with drug trafficking two days after Ivy’s death after deputies found drugs in the home Clay shared with Scronce. The sheriff said that the child had access to the drugs, making the parents responsible for her death.
While Scronce received a secured bond following his arrest in February, both parents were now being held without bond for the murder of Ivy.
Sheriff Brown described Ivy’s death as “needless and tragic” and said it demonstrated “the deadly effects of fentanyl.”
Scronce and Clay had their first court appearance on June 2.
Fentanyl deaths among children in North Carolina have spiked in recent years.
Fentanyl contributed to the deaths of ten North Carolina children under the age of 5 in 2022. In 2015, the state only recorded one death in that age group. Among North Carolina teenagers, ages 13-17, fentanyl deaths jumped from four in 2015 to 25 in 2022.
North Carolina’s chief toxicologist Sandra Bishop-Freeman said that officials with the North Carolina Office of the Chief Medical Examiner were “floored” when they began seeing infants and toddlers who died from fentanyl toxicity.
