Mom Accused Of Poisoning Son With Prescription Drugs For A Year

A mother is charged with poisoning her 9-year-old son for nearly a year with a toxic mix of prescription medication that she allegedly obtained from two hospitals, neither of which knew about the other.

Rachel Kinsella, 35, of Meadville, Missouri, is charged with felony endangerment of the welfare of a child, prosecutors announced Friday.

Investigators — who have been working on the case since January, when Kinsella’s son was put in protective custody — say the mother allegedly brought her son to different hospitals to get him treated for epilepsy, according to Fox 2.

Doctors realized there was something wrong after the boy became ill from an overdose of prescription medication on several occasions starting March 7, 2014. Prosecutors allege that Kinsella had been bringing the boy to two hospitals, one in St. Louis and another 200 miles away in Kansas City, to get drugs used for seizures and mental health.

“The child, when he would present at the hospital in very serious condition, would get much better while he was there,” St. Louis County Prosecutor Bob McCulloch told Fox 2. “When he was returned to her custody he got sick again. And apparently was being treated by two different doctors, apparently unknown to each other.”

Missouri is the only state in the nation without a prescription medication database, which would allow a hospital to see what another has prescribed a patient, although legislators are trying to change that.