Police ‘humiliated my family,’ says great-aunt of boy in heroin overdose photo

When police officer Kevin Thompson stopped a dark Ford Explorer swerving in traffic last week, he discovered a scene familiar to members of the East Liverpool Police Department: two adults who appeared to be overdosing on heroin.

But behind their slumped bodies in the front seat, Thompson also saw a toddler with wispy hair, lips pressed tightly together.

When photos of the scene were shared last week by the police department, the boy’s face and those of the adults driving him made headlines. Those adults — grandmother Rhonda Pasek, 50, and James Acord, 47 — were arrested shortly after being given an overdose treatment.

But the attention, which the police department intended to “show the other side of this horrible drug,” brought different consequences, Pasek’s sister told NBC News Wednesday.

"The city of East Liverpool humiliated my family and humiliated that little boy," she said, asking not to be identified by name.

The boy has now been placed with great-aunt and great-uncle Lori and Terry Lane, who live in Myrtle Beach, S.C., family attorney Brian Macala told NBC News.

But Pasek, who was initially identified in a police report as the boy’s mother, had “fought for two years straight” to get custody of her grandson in the first place, the sister told NBC. The boy’s maternal great-grandparents wanted the Lanes to take custody of the boy, but Prasek insisted that she wanted custody in court.

She succeeded in late July, in part because of the several times she visited the boy weekly and because Prasek lived near her parents in West Virginia, according to the East Liverpool Review. Custody was finalized just six weeks before she would be arrested for child endangerment and public intoxication.

Pasek’s son, the boy’s father, had “no education, no jobs” along with his girlfriend and Pasek wanted to step in to care for the 4-year-old, added the sister, who cares for the boy’s 3-year-old brother in Delaware.

Pasek had a previous arrest record for disorderly conduct and public intoxication that came up in custody hearings but did not appear to have any past issue with drugs, according to the judge who granted her custody.

Judge Thomas Baronzzi told the East Liverpool Review that had he known, “I certainly wouldn’t have given her the child.”

Pasek’s sister said Acord, the driver of the car, had not raised any alarm bells when they met and that she had never heard of any heroin use.

Pasek’s sister blamed the police department for not at least blurring the boy’s face in photos.

"Now they're taking him away from my sister. I'm not condoning what Rhonda done, but what they did to her and what they're doing to her grandson is too much,” she said.

But Brian Allen, the city's director of public services and safety, stood by the original publication of the photo and said blurring the photo was not an option for the police department.

"As a public official I can't blur public records and this photo is a public record," he told NBC News. "It's all or nothing for us.”

This story was originally published September 14, 2016 at 9:58 AM with the headline "Police ‘humiliated my family,’ says great-aunt of boy in heroin overdose photo."