Child Brings Crack Home From Daycare, Thinking It Was A Tooth

By Kelly Burch 10/12/18

The child was brought to the hospital after telling her mother she had put the “teeth” in her mouth.

2 kids playing in daycare

A four-year-old in New York was taken to the hospital after inadvertently bringing cocaine home from daycare, telling her mom that she thought it was a tooth. 

Sabrina Straker’s daughter Serenity said that another child at daycare had given her his “teeth,” Straker told WPIX. She showed her mother a small container with the item inside. 

"Inside was something small and white, which she described as a tooth—looked like rocks or pebbles. Then I was curious," Straker said.

The mother thought she might know what the items were, but didn’t want to believe it, she told PIX11. "This can't be what I think it is," Straker recalled thinking. "How did this get in the daycare?”

Serenity then showed her mom that she had even more “teeth.” “She comes back, 'well Mommy, I have a lot of his teeth,' so then I have a third capsule," Straker said. She decided to call the police. 

"This can't be what I'm thinking it is, because how could that be in a preschool?" she said. 

The daycare operator said that someone must have thrown the drugs onto the daycare’s property. "We did a thorough check. The children are fine. We called the parents," Yvette Joseph said.

However, Straker said it is decidedly not fine. When police arrived they tested the items in the capsules and identified that they were cocaine. "Lo and behold whatever this test kit is, it was blue and he said, 'this is what it is. That's what that means. This is crack cocaine.' I said 'What? Come again? No, I didn't just hear that,’" Straker recalled. 

Serenity was brought to the hospital because she told her mom that she put the “teeth” in her mouth. At the hospital, she tested positive for cocaine.

"She couldn't sit down. She was beyond bouncy, very loquacious, just all over the place, literally, talking to herself, looking in the mirror, saying she sees three of herself. Once they did the urine test it came back positive that she had cocaine in her system," Straker said.

Although Serenity was fine, her mother said that the incident could have had a very different ending. "Had my daughter ingested the capsule and not spit it out, I would be planning a funeral," she said. "Luckily, because she spit it out, she's still here.”

Straker said that she wants the daycare to be shut down, since staff did not notice the children passing around the drugs. 

“No one was watching the children," she said. "There are 15 kids in the room with two teachers and two aides, where were they when this was going on?"

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