NYC mom with suspected Munchausen syndrome by proxy busted for poisoning child: cops
Explore More
A Bronx mom poisoned her toddler daughter with “life-threatening levels” of seizure meds — in a suspected case of the bizarre Munchausen syndrome by proxy, cops and police sources say.
Tajahnae Brown, 23, was charged Friday with first-degree assault for allegedly making 190 trips to various providers seeking the unnecessary drugs for her 4-year-old, officials and prosecutors said.
Authorities believe that Brown suffers of Munchausen’s syndrome by proxy, a condition in which people are known to fabricate or induce illness in someone under their care, usually a child, sometimes to gain attention, police sources said.
The deeply troubling ordeal began May 2, when Brown brought her then-3-year-old daughter to Montefiore Medical Center, claiming the child was on seizure medication and needed more, police said.
“She made repeated statements that the child needed the meds that got the staff to administer more doses,” a police source said.
Before long, the staff realized the girl had “toxic levels” of the drugs in her blood, cops said.
She was “being poisoned by the meds,” the source said.
Hospital staff informed Brown of the obvious overdose and took the child off the medication, cops said.
The young girl then continued to stay with her mother at the hospital, where her drug levels went down but then spiked again, cops said.
During that time, Brown appears to have continued to “discretely administer the meds to life-threatening levels,” the source said.
The hospital called the Bronx District Attorney’s Office, which reached out to the NYPD, cops said.
An investigation determined the mom had made 190 trips to various providers to get her child the same excessive, harmful, drug prescriptions, cops said.
Brown gave “the same spiel” to the medical providers, the source said.
The mother, who has no prior criminal record, was granted supervised released with electronic monitoring at her arraignment on Friday night at Bronx Criminal Court.
ncG1vNJzZmimqaW8tMCNnKamZ2Jlf3R7kGlma29forK1vs5opbKbXaK8rnnWoquhZaOqwLGxwq2cnWWdqruktMCuqp6mXajGr7DRqKSeZZKuerG%2BzrGwZpqlqMGmsIyfpqtloKS2tLvNoqWgZZOdtq2wjJymqatf