YOUNGSTOWN — Shawna M. McCurdy, 21, and Randi E. Green, 25, both of Southern Boulevard in Boardman, were sentenced Wednesday to 18 months in prison after pleading guilty earlier to one count of felony child endangering involving their child.

Their child ate a brownie Nov. 19 or Nov. 20, 2023, that was laced with THC, the active ingredient in marijuana, prosecutors said. Judge R. Scott Krichbaum of Mahoning County Common Pleas Court handed down the sentences.

McCurdy gave conflicting stories about where the child got into the THC-laced brownie, said Caitlyn Andrews, county assistant prosecutor.

The child was taken to Akron Children’s Hospital Mahoning Valley in Boardman and later transferred to the main hospital in Akron, where she was treated for respiratory failure, Andrews said.

The child remained at the hospital for two weeks, but has made a full recovery, Andrews said. Before the child was released from the hospital, she could not swallow, sit up or stand up on her own, Andrews said. The child is in foster care now.

The “cutoff” amount of THC for a person at Akron Children’s Hospital is 5 nanograms per milliliter, but this child had 4,225 nanograms per milliliter, Andrews said.

According to a 2022 NBC News report, blood THC levels typically peak quickly after smoking cannabis, reaching upward of 100 nanograms per milliliter of blood within 15 minutes of smoking it. Then, THC levels drop rapidly to less than 2 nanograms per milliliter of blood after about four hours. It takes around eight hours to reach similarly low concentrations of THC after taking an edible, NBC reported.

NBC reported that a 2019 study led by Dr. Jeff Brubacher, an associate professor in the department of emergency medicine at the University of British Columbia, found that THC concentrations below 5 nanograms per milliliter did not appear to increase the risk of car accidents. Levels above 5 nanograms per milliliter, however, were associated with an increased risk. In Canada, where recreational marijuana was legalized in October 2018, the cutoff for THC is 2 nanograms per milliliter.

During Green’s sentencing hearing, Judge Krichbaum said “I have to take into account the absolute helplessness, the absolute vulnerability of the victim and this defendant’s unequivocal and absolute responsibility to see that something like this wouldn’t happen.”

POLICE REPORT

A Boardman police report states that officers were dispatched to the home McCurdy and Green shared on Southern Boulevard at 8:41 a.m. Nov. 20 and gave McCurdy a ride to Akron Children’s Hospital in Boardman because her 2-two-year-old child had been taken there.

The officer said it appeared McCurdy was under the influence of some type of drug or narcotic. Her speech was slurred and her movements seemed to be slow for a 21-year-old person. She admitted to being a marijuana user. A tall thin, white man was at the home with another child, the report stated.

When McCurdy was asked what was wrong with her child, she told the officer she was at a friend’s house in Hubbard the previous night about 11 p.m. when she noticed her daughter had started to eat THC-laced brownies. McCurdy said she cleaned and washed the child’s mouth prior to leaving to go home.

After dropping McCurdy off at the hospital, the officer was advised to make out a child endangering report. The child had been “virtually unresponsive when she arrived at the hospital,” the report stated.

McCurdy was taken to the emergency room to see her daughter because the child was going to be taken to the main campus in Akron, the report states. The officer went to the emergency room with the woman. The attending physician said the child tested positive for THC, and the protocol for a child that age is to administer a depressant type of medication, which paramedics did. When the child arrived at the hospital, she was “still seizing, and more of this mediation was given, which caused (the child) to need to be intubated, as she was no longer breathing on her own,” the report states.

The officer spoke to McCurdy again, but she was “very reluctant to answer my questions,” the report states. Other officers were asked to return to the couple’s apartment and speak with Green, the child’s father. Green told officers he took the child and McCurdy to an unknown address in Hubbard the previous night.

Officers used the phone that was used to direct the couple to the home in Hubbard. But the GPS history did not show a trip to Hubbard, the report states.

A hospital staff member advised the officer that he spoke with McCurdy by telephone before McCurdy arrived at the hospital, and McCurdy advised that she was “at a neighbor’s house when her daughter got into the THC brownies.”

The officer questioned McCurdy about that, and McCurdy “acted confused and began to talk about various people who just show up at her apartment with THC edible products,” the report stated.

Have an interesting story? Email Ed Runyan at erunyan@vindy.com.