Mother's friends were caring for Va. baby who overdosed

A Fairfax County woman whose 5-month-old baby overdosed on heroin last summer had left her son with two friends, court testimony on Tuesday revealed, and her attorney said she did not know that her friends had any of the powerful narcotic.

Marilyn Fischl, 36, rushed the baby to the hospital after she came home and saw that his "eyes were rolling around and his lip was quivering," a Fairfax police detective testified Tuesday. The child survived but is no longer in his mother's care.

Fischl, the boy's father and the two babysitting friends all were charged with felony child abuse and neglect. At a preliminary hearing Tuesday in Fairfax Juvenile and Domestic Relations Court, Judge Janine M. Saxe found probable cause to send Fischl's case to the grand jury for possible indictment.

No information emerged at the hearing about how an infant might have ingested heroin. On July 14, Fischl and the baby's father, Rafael Preston, 30, had taken Fischl's 2-year-old daughter to a medical appointment and left the baby with Erin C. Flynn, 30, and Patrick M. Hall, 41, in Fischl's rented townhouse in the Springfield area.

Police said they were not notified of the overdose until late July, after toxicology tests confirmed that heroin was found in the baby's system. Detective Darrin DeCoster testified that he interviewed Fischl about three months later, in October, and that Fischl suspected that Flynn or Hall had somehow provided the baby heroin, but that Fischl had not given heroin to them.

DeCoster said that he obtained a warrant to search the townhouse and that on Oct. 29, he found a spoon with heroin residue on it in a dresser drawer. Spread around the master bedroom, closet and bathroom were "no less than 100" hypodermic needles, DeCoster said.

DeCoster's affidavit for the warrant indicated that he had interviewed Flynn and that Flynn accused Fischl of paying for the babysitting with heroin. DeCoster said Tuesday that Fischl denied this.

Fischl knew that Flynn and Hall were recovering heroin addicts, her attorney Cary S. Greenberg said.

But she thought that they had no heroin that day and did not plan to shoot any, Greenberg said. He also said Fischl had found Hall to be a trustworthy babysitter in the past.

At some point, Flynn and Hall left the baby with Preston's mother, and when she saw that the infant appeared to be sick, she called Fischl, DeCoster testified. Fischl quickly hurried home, said Greenberg, who argued that her actions did not constitute intentional child abuse.

But Saxe ruled that Fischl's decision to leave the baby with known drug users was enough to send the case to Circuit Court.

The preliminary hearings for the three other defendants are set for later this week and next month.