Iowa Mom Drugged Kids So She Could Sleep During The Day: Police

DES MOINES, IA — An 8-year-old Des Moines boy wandering outside during the oppressive heat Sunday afternoon had been drugged by his mother so she could sleep, according to a criminal complaint charging her with three counts of child endangerment. Two of his siblings had been drugged as well, the complaint said.

The boy was “in a state of physical distress” after being outside for hours in the heat when he showed up at his neighbors’ gathering about 4:45 p.m., according to the complaint. Temperatures were in the low 90s and high humidity made for a miserable afternoon.

He told the neighbors he was concerned about his mother, who he couldn’t rouse from a deep sleep, the complaint said. The boy told police that it was not unusual for her to give him and his siblings both sleeping pills and other medications so they would sleep during the daytime.

When police arrived, they found the mother — Morgan Brown-Edmundson, 35 — passed out, television station WHO reported. According to the complaint, the boy told police

Police were able to wake Brown-Edmondson, who “was out of it,” Des Moines Police Sgt. Paul Parizek told the Des Moines Register.

“She was under the influence of something,” he told the newspaper.

Brown-Edmondson and her children were taken to a Des Moines hospital, where security officers found open containers of alcoholic beverages in her purse, radio station KHAK reported. When police asked her how much she had drank, Brown-Edmondson reportedly said “more than enough and over the limit.”

Parizek told the Register that Brown-Edmondson “was more irritated with the adults that brought her kid home than she was concerned with the kids.”

“We thank those people for stepping up and being good neighbors and taking care of those kids,” he said.

Brown-Edmondson was released from jail Monday morning, according to records. The children have been removed from her care, WHO said.

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