DSS waited 9 months to report baby born with drugs in system, police say

A Rock Hill mother was charged with child abuse after her newborn son tested positive for narcotics, but the Department of Social Services waited nine months to report it to law enforcement, according to Rock Hill police.

Heather Nicole Williams, 27, was charged Thursday with unlawful conduct toward a child, according to a police report.

Officers in June spoke with a case worker from the Department of Social Services who told them a child was in the intensive care unit at Piedmont Medical Center after he was born in September, according to a police report. The investigator said the child was “having withdrawals from narcotics” after birth.

The child and mother each tested positive for multiple narcotics in their system, police said.

The DSS case worker told a detective “she could not explain why they had waited nine months to report to (law enforcement) that the baby had been born with narcotics in his system,” the report states. “Since that time, the suspect, Williams, had been arrested for unlawful conduct toward a child on another case.”

It wasn’t clear if the victim in that arrest was the same baby born with narcotics in his system.

Williams has a pending charge of unlawful neglect of a child from April, according to York County court records.

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