Fort Worth man, 20, gets 7 years in child pot case |
News for Dallas, Texas | Dallas Morning News
| Breaking News for Dallas-Fort Worth | Dallas Morning News
One of two men videotaped last year giving pot to young children accepted a plea deal Tuesday and was sentenced to seven years in prison – saving himself from a possible life sentence.Vanswan Polty, 20, of Fort Worth pleaded guilty to two counts of injury to a child causing bodily harm and three counts of burglary of a habitation.
He was to face two charges of injury to a child – for giving a marijuana cigar to 2- and 4-year-old brothers – at a later time, prosecutors said.
Investigators said Mr. Polty was a teen in early 2007 when he and a friend, Demetris McCoy, urged the youngsters to smoke marijuana at Mr. McCoy’s Watauga home. Mr. Polty and Mr. McCoy, the boys’ uncle, came to the attention of police who were investigating a string of residential burglaries in Watauga, Fort Worth and Blue Mound.
The videotape was uncovered during that investigation. In addition to prompting the boys to smoke the drug-laden cigar, Mr. Polty and Mr. McCoy could also be seen and heard on the tape laughing and calling the tots “potheads.”
At the time of the incident, the boys’ mother, Shatorria Russell, was asleep in a nearby room. Ms. Russell has since tested positive for drugs and relinquished custody of her boys, a CPS official said. The children are in foster care and will be placed for adoption.
It is reprehensible that anyone would force a 2- and a 4-year-old to smoke anything. That said, those kids suffered far less damage from those few puffs off a blunt than if they had been raised by a tobacco smoker who smokes indoors. And yet, I don’t think I’ve ever heard of a case where someone was charged with “injury to a child causing bodily harm” for their secondhand tobacco smoke (though my Googling did find child custody cases where a judge considered tobacco smoking as a factor). YouTube videos of cute youngsters running about the living room while the parent smokes a cigarette never become viral hits.
