Arrests made in overdose death of woman with 9 children

[Judi Lynn]

Source: Associated Press

Updated 10:51 am, Saturday, December 16, 2017

MIDDLETOWN, Ohio (AP) — Authorities say two men have been arrested in connection with the suspected overdose death of a woman whose nine children watched her die in their family's Ohio home.

The Cincinnati Enquirer reports Middletown police on Friday arrested 63-year-old Jim Boyer and his son, 32-year-old Keith Boyer, after issuing warrants earlier in the day. They've been charged with tampering with evidence, abuse of a corpse and petty theft. It's unclear whether they have attorneys.

The woman died Wednesday in Middletown. Police say the two men stole money from the woman and then left her to die.

Her death prompted Middletown police to make an appeal for donations of clothes, blankets, toys and appliances to the family of five girls and four boys ranging in age from 1 to 14.

Read more: http://www.chron.com/news/crime/article/Arrests-made-in-overdose-death-of-woman-with-9-12435714.php

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Jim Boyer



Keith Boyer

Arrests made after Middletown mom of 9 died from an overdose, community responds
Sarah Brookbank and Bob Strickley, Cincinnati Enquirer Published 9:13 a.m. ET Dec. 15, 2017 | Updated 4:41 p.m. ET Dec. 15, 2017

http://www.lohud.com/story/news/2017/12/15/middletown-police-call-help-9-kids-whose-mom-left-die-drug-overdose/954849001/

[JesterCS]

1. I live in Monroe, just next to Middletown

The heroin epidemic is terrible here. This part of Ohio is known as the Heroin Highway because Interstate 75 and interstate 70 intersect and most heroin flows right along through here.

[monmouth4]

2. Merry Christmas kids...Too sad. n/t

[Honeycombe8]

3. They might have a chance at a better life without her, sad to say.

If she was a heroin addict. Now they can go into foster homes. Maybe it'll be just as bad from here on out, or maybe it'll be better. Maybe some will be adopted.

She should never have had nine kids, of course.

[monmouth4]

4. You're probably right but this particular Christmas will never leave them..n/t

[StevieM]

5. I don't think it is fair to say that the children of someone with an addiction problem

are better off with their parent dead.

And I don't believe that they are better off being adopted and separated from their blood relatives.

Hopefully their father (who is the parent of all 9 kids, according to the article) will be able to take care of them with help from his family, her family and caring members of the community.

[Honeycombe8]

7. The article in the OP doesn't mention who the father is.

But yes, I definitely would say that children might be better off without the influence of a heroin-addicted parent. Most definitely.

I also think it's better for children to be raised in a loving, well-adjusted family without addicted parents, than those that are addicted or "blood."

[StevieM]

8. I hardly trust the state not to jump at any chance to TPR people in order to get babies

to more "deserving" couples. Hell, they are already doing that.

And I think it is always better to preserve the family and keep blood relatives together.

I disagree that addicted parents are incapable of providing love. The best thing to do is to treat the addiction, not destroy the family.

[Honeycombe8]

13. Children are usually removed from households w/addicts. Don't know how they missed this one.

The state doesn't want to take kids. It costs money, takes a lot of social worker time, and there's a shortage of foster homes. If they HAD wanted to, those kids would have been saved before this happened.

Kids are far better in a safe, secure environment. Whether it's with blood relatives or not is irrelevant. I don't think that's very important, actually. Just look at all the families with adopted kids.

It's not that addicts can't provide love. In fact, they may love their kids. But what kids need is the basics, like food, clothing, secure safe place to live, structure and discipline, teaching by example, education. Addicts can't give any of those things. I knew a few heroin addicts back in the day. They live in a world of their addiction. They are no longer whoever they used to be. They live for a fix, and that's about it. If they don't kick their addiction, it will kill them. That's not an "if." It will. I'm surprised the children weren't born addicted or with disabilities, if she was using while pregnant.

[Sen. Walter Sobchak]

6. My adopted cousins sure feel that way

Being seized by the State of California was the best thing that ever happened to them.

Eventually curiosity got the better of them and they went looking for their birth mothers and neither found anything good and they began to suffer panic attacks just thinking about what might have become of them had they not been taken by the state.

[StevieM]

9. Has it occurred to you--or them--that the birth mothers' lives might have been destroyed

when they suffered the pain of losing their children, with no hope of recovering their parental rights or status?

[Sen. Walter Sobchak]

10. Their lives were destroyed by drugs and keeping the company of criminal men

One of them also had a history of violent crime and included armed robbery and stabbing another woman.

Their mom warned them that they were not going to like what they found and that their birth parents were not Romeo and Juliette or Jack and Diane but they picked the scab anyways.

Children shouldn't be carrots to be dangled in the faces of junkies.

[StevieM]

11. Their mom shouldn't have been talking their birth families down.

No adoptive parent should be speaking ill of their children's biological relatives.

[Sen. Walter Sobchak]

12. She answered questions asked by her adult children truthfully