A 30-year-old woman suspected of killing her three-month-old daughter with methadone was arrested by the PJ criminal police on Wednesday last week.
The crime is said to have taken place on Christmas Eve 2011 in a small town called Pisões, in Alcobaça.
On Christmas morning, the child was found lifeless in the home where the woman lived with her husband, their other two children and another family member.
Rescue services were called but the child could not be saved.
“At first it seemed that the child had died from natural causes, more specifically sudden death,” a source from the investigation told Público newspaper. The autopsy report, however, concluded that high levels of methadone, an anti-addictive yet powerful analgesic, found in the infant’s body was most likely the cause of death.
The new information led the Criminal Investigation Department of Leiria to look further into the case and learnt that the mother was a recovering drug addict who had been supplied with various doses of methadone for the duration of the Christmas holidays.
The criminal department retraced what happened on the night of the crime and concluded that the mother was the only one who could have administered the drugs.
The PJ believe that the mother did not intend to kill her child, but evidence shows that she knew the drug’s risks but still used them on her baby.
The woman is now on remand at the Tires prison in Cascais.
