Fentanyl OD leads to parent charge 

A Los Angeles County Superior Court judge issued an arrest warrant for a Canyon Country mother after a local elementary school student suffered from fentanyl exposure, according to a Santa Clarita Valley Sheriff’s Station investigation.  

The parent, Kelly Adalbert, 44, has not been arrested as of the publication of this story. She has been sought for arrest on a $130,000 warrant since Aug. 20, according to court records. 

A criminal complaint filed that day charged Adalbert with a felony count of child endangerment, someone who “willfully causes or permits the person or health of that child to be injured, or willfully causes or permits that child to be placed in a situation where his or her person or health is endangered,” according to Penal Code section 273 a(a). There was an additional allegation that the offense caused great bodily injury.  

The victim was a Rio Vista Elementary School sixth-grader, who reportedly had fallen asleep in class and woke up feeling “dizzy and light-headed” around 1 p.m. Oct. 1, according to Shirley Miller, spokeswoman for the SCV Sheriff’s Station. 

The student was taken to a local hospital for medical treatment, where staff helped detectives confirm what had happened. 

The student was reportedly unaware that he had consumed the narcotics, Miller said. Detectives investigated and determined there had been fentanyl exposure in the boy’s home. 

The case is still part of an active investigation by the station’s Robbery-Assault Team, Miller said. Anyone with information about the case can contact the Santa Clarita Valley Sheriff’s Station at 661-260-4000. 

Other cases  

The child made a full recovery, but that’s not always the case in the exposure to a narcotic as dangerous as fentanyl, which the Centers for Disease Control reported as 50 times stronger than heroin, and extremely addictive.  

It’s often prescribed in hospitals for advanced-stage cancer patients or post-surgical recovery because of its extreme potency, according to the Drug Enforcement Administration. A lethal dose, however, can be as little as a few grains of table salt. Its potency, addictive nature and relatively cheap cost have made it grow in popularity in the illicit drug market, according to officials, and one tragic side effect has been that cases like this Canyon Country incident have occurred in communities throughout Los Angeles County, according to the head of the Family Violence Division’s Complex Child Abuse Section for the District Attorney’s Office.  

There have now been cases related to six child deaths from fentanyl prosecuted by the DA’s Office, according to Deputy District Attorney Jon Hatami, a Valencia resident and the person in charge of the DA’s complex child-abuse division.  

Jeffrey Michael Martin, a Porter Ranch man who pleaded not guilty earlier this month, was the latest filing by the DA’s office, which charged Martin with willful cruelty to a child causing death, with a special allegation that notes the victim died. 

“We have filed six fentanyl cases where we have charged a parent or caretaker for the fentanyl death of a child in their care,” Hatami said, adding that a recent California Supreme Court ruling has prompted a change how his office pursues such cases.  

Hatami has been a longtime advocate for children, a survivor of abuse himself, who first gained attention for the office in his successful prosecution of two parents convicted in a torture killing of a young boy. The tragedy was documented in a six-part Netflix documentary, “The Trials of Gabriel Fernandez.” 

Hatami’s current caseload involves a child’s death in the neighboring Antelope Valley, where three adults, including the boy’s mother, were initially charged with homicide in the death of 17-month-old Justin Bulley. 

Previously, the DA’s Office sought homicide charges in incidents where a child died from alleged negligence involving child overdoses.  

At an April 2025 hearing, at the request of Hatami’s office, Judge Denise McLoughlin Bennett held Jessica Dominique Darthard and Jessie Milton Darthard to answer to murder charges in the Feb. 18, 2024, death of her son. 

Since that initial criminal complaint over Bulley’s death, the California Supreme Court issued a ruling in People v. Collins, which clarified the standard necessary to hold a parent responsible for a child’s actions. 

In that case, a Kern County mother who had a history of drug abuse left her child with the boy’s father, who caused a fatal injury to their child. The Kern County Superior Court and the Court of Appeal upheld the convictions, according to Justia, an online legal search engine. 

The Supreme Court of California ruled there wasn’t enough evidence for a second-degree murder conviction, because the court found for that implied malice murder charge, the evidence must show that the parent had a significant understanding of the danger and failed to act, exhibiting “conscious disregard.” 

As a result of the ruling, Darthard’s murder charge was eliminated at a hearing in the Antelope Valley Courthouse last week.  

“The Complex Child Abuse unit is dedicated to fighting for justice for abused, neglected and murdered children. Outside the realm of physical abuse, children, toddlers and babies are increasingly becoming victims of the opioid crisis. Fentanyl in the home is deadly to children,” Hatami wrote in a message this week. “It is not only our collective responsibility to protect all of our children, it is the legal responsibility of parents and caretakers to protect children. The unit remains committed to holding accountable anyone who exposes children, toddlers and babies to fentanyl.”