Police: 2 arrested after Sewickley Township boy tests positive for cocaine

A Sewickley Township couple were jailed after a child tested positive for cocaine, according to court papers.

Channing Fitzgerald Flanigan, 30, and Arrica Ann Howell, 32, of Hutchinson, are charged with aggravated assault, child endangerment and reckless endangerment.

Troopers said they were called to the home in May after a staff member at the Westmoreland County Children’s Bureau got a tip that Flanigan and Howell were using drugs around a 2-year-old boy. A test at UPMC Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh showed the child tested positive for cocaine, according to court papers.

Flanigan and Howell told troopers they use heroin and cocaine on occasion only in their basement and that they wash their hands to prevent any accidental exposure to the child. The pair said they last used drugs about a week before the positive test. They suggested the child may have touched a doorknob to the basement and ingested the drug, police said.

Charges were filed Friday. Flanigan and Howell were arrested and jailed at the Westmoreland County Prison on $25,000 bail each. Neither had an attorney listed in online court records. Preliminary hearings are set for Aug. 10.

It was unclear from court papers if the children’s bureau remained involved in the case.

Flanigan was sentenced to six months probation in a 2011 drug possession case in Monroeville, according to online court records. Howell doesn’t have a criminal history in Pennsylvania.

Young children unintentionally exposed to cocaine can experience fevers, seizures, dysrhythmia and potentially death, according to a 2017 study published in the Journal of Emergency Medicine. Researchers in California found that, although relatively rare, accidental pediatric cocaine exposures can lead to worse outcomes than most unintentional pediatric poisonings.