Charges considered in apparent overdose death of 10-year-old

Published 8:00 pm Friday, December 6, 2019

MINNEAPOLIS — The Hennepin County Attorney’s Office is reviewing possible charges in the apparent overdose death of a 10-year-old girl in Minneapolis.

Officers were dispatched to a south side home Nov. 21 on a report of a child who was choking, according to a police report. Firefighters and paramedics found the girl wasn’t breathing, didn’t have a pulse and tried to revive her, but she was pronounced dead after being rushed to the Hennepin County Medical Center.

The police report said the girl died of an overdose, while no cause of death has been officially released by the Hennepin County Medical Examiner’s Office, according to the Star Tribune.

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The case, which investigators have forward to prosecutors, could lead to criminal charges against whomever supplied her with the drugs, whether intentionally or not.

Minneapolis has had a decade-high 1,416 overdoses this year, 78 of which were fatal, according to police records.

The death of the south Minneapolis girl, whose identity has not been released, was at least the 13th fatal overdose so far this year involving victims 21 and younger.