14 DAY TRIAL // A 56-year-old grandmother from Modena in Chester County has been arrested after her first-grade grandson took her heroin stash to school.
Teachers at Caln Elementary School, in Thorndale, Pennsylvania, alerted the police after they found several packets of heroin on the 7-year-old boy on Friday. According to court documents, police found nine bags of heroin stamped “Victoria Secret” in the boy's pants pockets.
Pauline Bilinski-Munion, the grandmother, was taken into custody on Sunday and is facing child endangerment and drug charges after her grandson brought the heroin into his classroom. The woman told police she “lost track” of the drugs at her house while she was babysitting her grandchildren, the 7-year-old boy and a one-year-old baby, on Thursday.
When confronted by teachers, the schoolboy initially claimed he found the drugs in the school yard, but he eventually admitted he brought the bags from home. He told prosecutors he had found the heroin on the floor by a washing machine at the Modena home where he currently lives with his mother, father and grandmother.
According to CBS Philly, the district attorney's office criticized the school district's handling of the incident. Officials were enraged because the school didn't notify prosecutors about the incident, and they found out about the heroin through media reports. Chester County District Attorney Tom Hogan said in a statement that the notice was “late and vague.”
“Heroin in an elementary school is a nightmare. Any exposure to heroin for a young child is likely to result in death. The defendant is lucky that she was not responsible for the death of her own grandson or somebody else’s child,” Hogan told the aforementioned newspaper.
Parents were also outraged when they learned about the incident at their kids' school.
The Coatesville Area School District, on the other hand, say they notified the Police Department “within minutes” after finding the controlled substance on the boy.
“Caln Elementary School administrators contacted the Coatesville Area School District Police Department within minutes of discovering an unknown substance within the possession of one of its students,” they said in a statement.
Police say Bilinski-Munion is a known drug user and she left her heroin stash out in the open inside the house while she was watching her grandchildren. She claimed she found the drugs outside her home, and kept them “in case of an emergency.”
The woman is currently in custody at Chester County Prison and she can be released on a $25,000 (€17,950) cash bail.