KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — A mother has been arrested on charges that she gave crack to her 4-year-old son to "calm him down."

Michelle R. Shelton, 32, of Kansas City, was arrested Thursday on a child endangerment charge. Police said the boy did not suffer any obvious injuries from taking the highly addictive drug. He remains in state custody.

Police first began investigating Shelton a year ago when officers said they saw her escorting drug users into the apartment complex where she and her son lived. Police said some residents at the complex told investigators Shelton sometimes gave the boy crack cocaine to "calm him down."

Social workers were sent to the apartment where they took hair samples from Shelton and her son to test for illegal drugs. The tests came back positive, police said.
According to court records, Shelton told detectives she found empty crack bags and drug paraphernalia throughout her home after parties her son attended. She said it was possible the child found some of the drug.

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wolf, please keep us informed on what happens here, if you hear any 'further developments' - this child should definately b taken into either state custody or adopted by another family or even member of the immediate family should they b able to prove that they can and will take care of him. the mother is unaware, obvioulsy, of the terrible harm she could bring to her child, even just by 'having empty bags of crack cocaine' in the house/apartment. this mother is obviously a user herself, and the child is not in safe hands, in my opinion... imagine, just now, she doesnt have the money to get her drugs, and she isnt earning enough as a prostitute or whatever she might b doing to get her kicks, and she tries to sell the child for her drug habit. this is a terrible, tragic story.

i am surprised there are no comments to this post??? anyone??

I did not comment at first because the whole story really p------ me off! this woman needs to be shot in the head! I do not feel sorry for her poor drug addiction she did it too herself and has absolutly no rights to be a mother at all. (theres an earful for ya)

People are nuts!

What can I say? Again how low can the human race go? We have to have licences to keep animals but no so for having children! And our outrage is out the illegal substances, what about the abusive use of ADD medication, so called "calming down" our children! There is some nightmare abuse of legal substances as well going on.

i might have read your comment wrongly, but i think that there is a bit of a difference between MEDICATION for ADD and CRACK COCAINE for ADD???
i am with you gilly, maybe not so straight forwardly (haha) but i would say, as i did before, that i dont think that this mother has any 'right' to b a mother to that child. the child doesnt know what he is being given could seriously f*** up the rest of his life - he TRUSTS his mother, who is making a huge 'mistake' by giving her son this 'stuff' - it does make me mad when i hear this sort of thing, but what makes me even more angry is when i hear that the child support care/social services are NOT doing much about it. hey, the child is still there right? so they are NOT DOING MUCH ABOUT IT as far as i am concerned. if there was so much as a 'sniff' of cocaine/crack in the house, that child should have been outta there in my eyes.

The poor boy! You here about the learning problems that children whose mother's used crack when they were pregnant are faced with, I wonder what problems this boy will have. Although hopefully because his brain was already formed the problems wont be so severe but it is still terrible. Who would do that to a child? Do you think she could really be so ignorant as to truly believe that it helped him?

wow I must have been in some mood the day I wrote the above comment! I think this woman is in need of some serious help and her son hopefully will recover from the poison that was given to him. Gobbi did bring up a good point what is DHS doing about the situation and what will become of this child?I wonder if he will be returned to mommy dearest once she has gone to rehab or will she lose all rights to him forever. if finds out anything please post it. lol I would think that crack for ADD would be defeating the purpose. although I do think americans have problems with disiplining (spelling) our kids and try to "fix" it with medication. Hopefully nobody goes to the extrem of this crack head mother.

i just really do find it pretty amazing that she might b let away with this, but.. 'if it happens again...' hey.. who's to say that there will b another time? she might kill her son the next time. he might have a seizure or brain haemorrage or clots on the lung/brain, or 'freak out' or think he can fly from the top window or something. then what? she loses her son but doesnt get a prison sentence, no.. instead she gets put into rehab right??? this woman should b in prison already. good thing i am not a senator or a head of state or anything 'big' really aint it??