MIAMI – Police officers rescued a naked 2-year-old girl who had been living in unsanitary conditions in South Beach when her parents overdosed on drugs, according to a police report.
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Fire rescue personnel found the girl’s mother, Paola Canales, naked and unconscious in the bathtub in their second-floor apartment, near Pennsylvania Avenue and 16 Street, according to police.
The girl’s father, Alberto Medel, had called 911 at about 4:30 a.m., on Sunday, and he was holding his daughter who was crying and naked as he talked to Miami Beach police officers, according to police.
“I am cold, I am cold,” the girl said in Spanish, according to a police officer’s arrest report.
Medel was trying to put a diaper on his daughter when he “soon began to rapidly lose consciousness and became extremely lethargic” before he “fell into an unresponsive state, collapsing,” a police officer wrote.
Fire rescue personnel had administered Narcan to Canales, 29, to treat her narcotic overdose and was taking her to Mount Sinai Hospital after the emergency drug had a “minimal” effect, according to police.
Fire rescue personnel had to return to take Medel to the same hospital. Records show police officers and fire rescue personnel were alarmed by the dirty clothing, trash, and clutter in the apartment
Records show the girl “was clearly in distress, crying, and asking for food and clothing,” so a police officer dressed and fed her to “help calm her down” and took her to the Miami Beach Police Department.
Records show Miami Beach police officers later gave custody of the toddler to a representative of the Florida Department of Children and Families reporting she “could have” suffered injury or death.
Medel and Canales survived and made their first court appearance on Wednesday. They both faced child neglect charges and had U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement holds.
On Wednesday night, Miami-Dade County inmate records show Medel was at the Metrowest Detention Center and Canales was at the Turner Guilford Knight Correctional Center.