Bucks County woman gets probation for killing son with drug-laced breast milk

A Bucks County woman was sentenced to three years of probation and community service after admitting she fed her 10-week-old baby drug-laced breast milk last year, killing him.

Samantha Whitney Jones, 31, of New Britain, sobbed in court Wednesday as she spoke of her infant son, R.J., who died after he went into cardiac arrest April 2, 2018.

“I never wanted this to happen,” said Jones, who spent 11 days in prison after her arrest on an involuntary manslaughter charge. "I loved my little boy more than anything. I loved him, and I have to live with this every day.”

Jones, who had been taking methadone, amphetamine, and methamphetamine last year, said she was too tired at 3 a.m. to go downstairs and prepare a bottle of formula for the crying baby. Jones was prescribed methadone to wean herself from a painkiller addiction and did not ask for help when she relapsed.

After breast-feeding her son, Jones said, she fell asleep. She later woke up to find him pale and bloody mucus oozing from his nose. He was pronounced dead at Doylestown Hospital at 8:29 a.m.

In sparing Jones a jail sentence, President Judge Wallace H. Bateman Jr. noted her efforts to stay sober in the year since the baby’s death.