FREMONT — Kristofer Ferreyra was 10 days shy of his second birthday last month when Fremont police say he somehow ingested fentanyl and became the Bay Area’s latest child victim of the deadly opioid.
In San Jose last spring, Phoenix Castro was just three-months-and-1-day old when she, too, died of a fentanyl overdose.
In each case, parents sobbed over tiny caskets. And in each case, a parent with drug problems is now in jail, facing charges that they are responsible for the deaths of their babies.
“Everyone is grieving,” one of baby Kristofer’s uncles said Wednesday, a day after the toddler’s mother, Sophia Gastelum-Vera, was arrested at her Fremont home.
On the mother’s Facebook page, she posted an invitation late last month to his rosary, viewing and funeral at a time he should have been trick-or-treating. The message included a collage of photos spanning his brief life. “God’s Little Angel,” it said.
One week later, Gastelum-Vera, 26, was arrested and sent to Santa Rita jail. Three other children are left at home.
As fentanyl-related child deaths mount across the Bay Area, the drug’s powerful force is shattering families and leaving at its mercy everyone who is trying to protect innocent children, from relatives to police to child-welfare workers.
“I know the parent wouldn’t mean for it to happen,” said Gastelum-Vera’s neighbor, Brian Kinder, who said he overcame a drug addiction of his own years ago. “They don’t mean for their kid to die, but one mistake and there goes your life. It only takes one little thing.”
Experts say that fentanyl’s potency and popularity helps explain the sudden succession of infant deaths that have rocked the Bay Area region in recent years. Fentanyl is 50 times stronger than heroin, and experts say it is increasingly being sold and used in family homes where infants can be exposed to it.
Kristofer and baby Phoenix are the latest entries on a grim and growing list of Bay Area infants exposed to fentanyl while in the care of a parent.
In 2020, 2-year-old Jasani Kerry died after being exposed to fentanyl that was left around his Brentwood home. His mother, Genesis Barrera-Galdamez, was arrested and charged with murder but later accepted a plea deal to manslaughter.
Last year in Livermore, 1-year-old Francesca Pittman died from apparent fentanyl poisoning while at home with her father, Justin Pittman, who was later charged with murder. He pleaded not guilty and is awaiting trial.
And in May — the same month baby Phoenix died in San Jose — paramedics saved the life of an infant girl in Oakland after her mother allegedly left fentanyl in an easily accessible part of their home. The girl’s mother was later charged with felony child abuse and has pleaded not guilty.
The recent spate of child fentanyl deaths is “absolutely devastating,” said Dr. Jamie Chang, UC Berkeley associate professor of Social Welfare, whose research has focused on the impacts of fentanyl in the Bay Area.
“It’s unspeakable that children …. at such a young age have become victims of this crisis that we’re facing,” she said.
One study published this May in JAMA Pediatrics found that just over 340 children younger than 5 died nationally of fentanyl poisoning from 1999 to 2021, including 105 who were younger than 1.
Since 2018, the number of children younger than 5 who died from fentanyl poisoning has increased sixfold.
In the two most recent Bay Area examples, the families struggled with domestic violence, according to court records. And both sets of parents have other children whose futures are uncertain.
Kristofer was the youngest of four children who Gastelum-Vera, 26, shared with Christian Ferreyra, neighbors say. The family lived together in a house on Gina Street in Fremont until last year when domestic troubles and a restraining order filed against the father broke them apart, according to court records.
While Santa Clara County officials told the Bay Area News Group that social workers had “significant involvement” with baby Phoenix’s family and “dropped the ball” in allowing her stay in their custody, it is unclear whether Alameda County’s Department of Children and Family Services was ever called to Kristofer’s house or ever opened up any investigations regarding his family. An email by this news organization to the agency was not returned Wednesday.
Neighbors say, however, police had been to the house at least once some months before the toddler died.
On Oct. 18, Kristofer was found unresponsive in the home. After being rushed to the hospital, he died. Toxicology results confirmed a high level of fentanyl in the toddler’s system, police said. Police said they later found signs of illicit drug use at the family’s home and messages about fentanyl on the mom’s electronic devices.
Gastelum-Vera was held Wednesday without bail at the Santa Rita Jail after being booked on suspicion of murder and child abuse resulting in death.
She is scheduled to be arraigned Thursday morning, though the Alameda County District Attorney’s Office had not filed charges in the case as of early Wednesday afternoon.
Gastelum-Vera’s grandfather, who was at the home Wednesday that he rented to Kristofer’s family, said everyone was shattered.
“He was a sweet little boy,” said the great-grandfather, who didn’t share his name. “I wanted the best for him.”
Source: www.mercurynews.com