A Montgomery County mother admitted to introducing her 15-year-old daughter and the girl's teen boyfriend to heroin, taking the couple -- and sometimes an 8-year-old child -- on trips into Philadelphia to buy the drug.
Patricia Davenport pleaded guilty Tuesday to charges that she supplied drugs to minors.
“I can’t fathom these allegations,” District Attorney Risa Vetri Ferman said last year when Davenport along with Megan Rudolph were arrested. “It’s incomprehensible to me that any parent would introduce their children, their child, to drugs like this. And not just introduce them, but then perpetuate that addiction and obtain (the drugs) and inject them on multiple occasions.”
Ferman said that the drug investigation began on the first day of school at Souderton High School in Souderton, Pennsylvania when a report came in that a 15-year-old girl was using drugs supplied by her mother. About a week later, a girl told a school guidance counselor that she saw the same juvenile using heroin with Davenport.
The school nurse then found needle marks on the teenage tipster's arm, according to investigators.
Lower Salford Police began to uncover more details. They found that Davenport and Rudolph began using heroin together inside Davenport's Harleysville, Pennsylvania home back in April, 2014. On one occasion, police said that Davenport, 36, offered and snorted heroin with her teen daughter.
After that, Davenport and Rudolph, 27, began taking the girl, her 16-year-old boyfriend, and sometimes Davenport's 8-year-old son, on drug-buying trips into Philadelphia, said investigators.
Local
Breaking news and the stories that matter to your neighborhood.
The women and teens would then use the drugs while driving back home to Montgomery County, according to investigators. The women would use syringes to inject themselves and the girls.
Ferman said that even though the group would sometimes bring Davenport's 8-year-old along, they never gave the boy any heroin. The buys would happen multiple times a week.
"Mom was supplying the funds not only for herself, and others, but for her daughter," said Lower Salford Police Chief Thomas Medwid.
Davenport is scheduled to be sentenced in December. Rudolph already pleaded guilty to identical charges as well. Both women faced 11 counts in total including corruption of minors, child endangerment, reckless endangerment and drug counts, according to court documents.
