Quick parenting note: If your malnourished 14-year-old son does tons of drugs, don't let your trailer catch fire. The cops will find out about it, and get, like, so mad.
That's what happened Tuesday, when 47-year-old Darin MacDannald was arrested in Deerfield Beach on child cruelty charges. Police say his son, who weighed 85 pounds, was examined at Coral Springs Medical Center and found to have "unexplained red blotches" on his legs and "had pinpointed pupils and was... under the influence of some type of drug or drugs. A drug screen of [his] blood and urine tested positive for barbiturates, opiates, cocaine, and marijuana."
Hospital staff also found the boy was carrying a cigarette, a makeup case full of coke, Xanax, and oxycodone. He also "had dirty clothes on and appeared to be dirty all over."
CBS Miami spoke with some of his neighbors -- they all said they noticed something was wrong, but... didn't care.
"Yeah, I know he was very thin and pale. But besides that I never spoke to him," said Elizabeth Corpeno, a neighbor with children of her own. "I don't know. I worry about mine and that's it."Best trailer park in the world, that one. Full of upstanding folks who really care -- druggie tenth-graders and their lovely neighbors. Somebody get Corpeno and Nunez a plaque.
In the small trailer park where they lived that seemed to be the consensus. Everyone keeps to themselves. Even Genesis Nunez and her father who lived next door to the 14-year-old.
"We noticed it. But that was between them," said Nunez. When asked why she didn't call police she said, "That's a personal problem between them."
The child is still in the hospital; MacDannald is in jail with a bond set at $7,500.
MacDannald PC
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