Credit: Montgomery County Jail
Credit: Montgomery County Jail
As part of the plea, Shanks agreed to spend four to six years in prison. She agreed not to seek judicial release and to waive all appellate and post-conviction actions, as well as to withdraw all her pending motions.
Shanks will be on parole for two to five years, according to the Montgomery County Prosecutor’s Office.
Shanks called 911 at about 10:10 a.m. on March 30 to report her grandson was cold and unresponsive at an apartment in the first block of Benning Place, according to Montgomery County Prosecutor Mat Heck Jr.
Medics pronounced 5-year-old Charles Brown dead at the scene.
Shanks told police that she babysat Charles, his twin sister and a 3-year-old boy on the weekend while their mother worked, Heck said.
Investigators found straws with drug residue in the apartment, the prosecutor said, which were determined to be cocaine, fentanyl, fluorofentanyl and xylazine by lab testing.
Charles’ death was ruled as an accident due to fentanyl, fluorofentanyl and xylazine intoxication, according to a postmortem examination by Montgomery County Coroner Dr. Kent Harshbarger. He tested positive for 11 milliliters of fentanyl, fewer than 1 milliliter of fluorofentanyl, 5.3 milliliters of norfentanyl and 13 milliliters of xylazine.
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