The father of a 1½-year-old boy who died in his St. Paul home on Christmas wrote in a court document earlier this year that he’d found drug paraphernalia and residue around the boy and his then-3-year-old daughter.
If the girl would have picked up one of those items and put it in her mouth, “she could possibly lose her life,” he wrote in seeking an order for protection against his wife, who is the mother of the two children.
Now, both parents are under arrest on suspicion of manslaughter. Toxicology results will be needed to determine Jackson Joseph Weidell’s cause of death, but police said preliminary information is that narcotics may have played a role.
Court documents say the couple has a history of chemical dependency. Their daughter was taken from their custody after she was born with narcotics in her system. The child protection matter was closed in 2022 and the couple’s daughter was living with them again, after they completed treatment programs.
The current case came to light on Wednesday, when Jackson’s parents found him unresponsive and called 911. Officers responded to the 1000 block of East Fifth Street in the Dayton’s Bluff area about 1:30 p.m.
St. Paul Fire Department medics took Jackson to Regions Hospital, where he was pronounced dead.
Police arrested the boy’s 38-year-old father and 31-year-old mother. A case has been referred to the Ramsey County Attorney’s Office and is under investigation.
Toxicology results can take six to eight weeks to come back, said Sgt. Toy Vixayvong, a St. Paul police spokesman.
Past allegations of domestic violence between parents
Jackson’s father wrote in a March application for an order for protection against his wife that she’d run out of drugs and started walking around their Fifth Street home screaming, “Kill me” in front of their daughter. He wrote that she started throwing dishes and knives around him while holding Jackson, then 9 months old.
When she became aware he was calling the police, he wrote that she struck him.
“I don’t remember all the exact dates but these are some of the things that have happened recently: I’ve found broken pieces of a glass pipe in the bed our son was laying watching TV in, I constantly find straws, rolled up dollar bills, pieces of aluminum foil all of the above with dope residue just laying around my home,” wrote the man.
The Pioneer Press isn’t naming the parents Thursday because they have not been charged in the case involving Jackson.
“Now I’ve been dealing with this for a long time and it seems like I can’t get the help that I am begging for,” the man’s application continued. “Now it’s getting to the point where people, myself and my kids, are getting and can possibly get hurt bad.”
He did not appear at a hearing for the order for protection, and the matter was dismissed.
The woman applied for a protective order against her husband in April 2022, writing that he threatened and assaulted her that month. Soon after, she requested dismissal of the case, telling the court she felt safe and didn’t need it. He filed for an order for protection against her around the same time, which was later dismissed.
Child protection matters
There were not any publicly filed child protection matters involving Jackson in Minnesota court records. Relatives of the couple, who remain jailed, couldn’t be reached for comment Thursday.
The woman had two older children that she voluntarily terminated her parental rights to, according to the November 2020 child protection matter involving the couple’s daughter.
In 2017, St. Paul police found the woman slumped over in a vehicle and one of her children, then 3, was lying across her car seat and unrestrained.
A portable breath test of the woman registered 0.214, more than twice the legal limit to drive.
A child protection matter was filed involving the woman’s two older children. She “did not address her chemical dependency needs” or complete a parenting program at the time, according to a summary in the 2020 case.
In the 2020 matter, the woman said she found out she was pregnant about 10 weeks before she would have been full term. She said she’d been using Oxycodone and methamphetamine before she found out she was pregnant.
Her husband said at the time that he had a history of using meth and prescription medication that wasn’t prescribed to him.
The matter involving the couple’s daughter was dismissed in March 2022. A child protection worker wrote that the girl was then 1 year old, on track developmentally and living with her parents. The couple had completed all chemical dependency treatment requested by child protection.
