Four face charges in drug-use case involving infant

ELLSWORTH – A police call to a motel Saturday night resulted in charges against four people, including a young mother who was allegedly huffing paint in front of her 15-week-old baby.

The incident began about 11:45 p.m. when Jessica Sinclair, 19, an employee who also rents a room at the White Birches Motel on U.S. Route 1, brought a sick infant to the front desk.

Trooper Carleton Small of the Maine State Police said Sinclair also claimed to have smelled fumes in the room where she found the baby, who was reportedly vomiting and having spasms.

Small said he found the mother, later identified as Tasia Thomas, 20, attempting to air out the room. When he walked to the back of the motel, he discovered a spray paint can and a bag that she had used for “huffing,” or inhaling vapors to get high, before throwing the materials out the window, he said.

Thomas was issued a summons to appear in Ellsworth District Court on Nov. 15 on a charge of endangering the welfare of a child.

Her baby was treated at Maine Coast Memorial Hospital and later released to the father.

“Exposure to the fumes was more than likely what made him sick, but he was OK,” Small said.

The state Department of Health and Human Services also was called.

When he was behind the motel retrieving the paint can, Small smelled the odor of burning marijuana coming from the room next to where Thomas was staying, he said. He knocked on the door and found Sinclair, her boyfriend Peter Nadeau, and their friend, Aaron Herrick, who had allegedly been smoking marijuana in the bathroom.

Small said he found marijuana in the room, along with some oxycodone pills that had been crushed and formed into lines.

Herrick, 22, of Southwest Harbor, was summoned on a charge of unlawfully possessing a Schedule W drug.

Sinclair and Nadeau, 26, of Ellsworth, were summoned on charges of unlawfully possessing a Schedule W drug, possessing a usable amount of marijuana and possessing drug paraphernalia.

All three are scheduled to appear in Ellsworth District Court on Nov. 15.