Deputies said on Nov. 13, 2010, a 911 call was made about a dead infant at a home on Kimbrell Loop in the Campobello community.
After the Spartanburg County Coroner’s Office and the Spartanburg County Sheriff’s Office investigated the death, they determined that lethal amounts of medications, including morphine, had been passed to the infant through the breast milk of the baby's mother.
The investigation included toxicology tests.
Investigators said after an extensive investigation, they determined the child’s mother, Stephanie Irene Greene, was taking prescription painkillers while nursing her 1½ month old. Greene was arrested on Friday.
"Doing toxicology tests and things like that, we wanted to make sure, and the coroner's office wanted to make sure that we had done everything correctly and possible to make sure we understood fully what had happened to this child, how this child died and who was responsible for it," said Tony Ivey of the Spartanburg County Sheriff's Office.
Greene, 37, has been charged with homicide by child abuse or neglect and 38 counts of violation of drug distribution laws.
According to a representative from the South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control, Greene used fraudulent prescriptions to obtain painkillers in patch and pill form from a pharmacy in Inman. The DHEC representative said Greene got the drugs between March 2009 and December 2010.
Greene was arrested Friday and is at the Spartanburg County Detention Center.
"Taking care of children and raising children is very serious business, and if you're taking medication or whatever, follow the doctor's guidelines, consult your doctor, because this is something that should never have happened to an infant child like that. It had no control over this whatsoever and the mother should've known better," Ivey said.
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