After they failed to appear in court Thursday, arrest warrants were issued for the parents accused of murder in the death of their 2-year-old daughter suspected of ingesting fentanyl left within reach, prosecutors said.
Michelle Price and Steve Ramirez did not show up for their scheduled hearing Thursday, prompting the court to issue a bench warrant for their arrests, San Francisco District Attorney’s Office spokesperson Randy Quezada said Friday.
It was not immediately known whether San Francisco police had made arrests yet, but police spokespeople did not respond to the Chronicle’s inquiry regarding the case. As of Friday morning, the pair did not appear in jail records.
Prosecutors announced Wednesday that they added murder counts onto the existing child endangerment cases against Price and Ramirez after finding that the parents were “fully aware of the dangers of fentanyl,” District Attorney Brooke Jenkins told the Chronicle.
The parents allegedly kept Narcan in their Mission Dolores apartment, which prosecutors said suggested they feared someone could overdose. The toddler, Stevie Price, was born with drugs in her system and had been hospitalized for months after her birth, prosecutors said.
“There’s no question that they understood its lethality, that they understood the harm it had caused this child when she was born,” Jenkins said. “Still, (they) made a choice to continue to expose her to it, and expose her in grave and consistent ways.”