Santan Sun News Staff
The Maricopa County Attorney wants Chandler Police to do more investigation before it will consider filing charges against a Chandler mother accused of giving her teenaged son illegal drugs that led to his overdose death.
Police earlier this month arrested Jamie Barrett on a felony child abuse charge in the April 10 death of her son, Sean Schulman, 15.
Police said Sean died of a fentanyl overdose and that a series of texts between him and Barrett showed that a week earlier she had asked him “to try and get some ‘blues,’” which police in an affidavit said “is a common term for fentanyl, pills or other narcotic pills.”
The affidavit also said Barrett told Sean she would giove him a pill if he scored the drug and that “they talked about the price of drugs ‘5 for $50.’”
Barrett told police the marijuana vape pens her son used were perhaps laced with the deadly drug but tests showed the vaping devices only contained THC, the intoxicant in marijuana, police said.
The arrest affidavit also stated Barrett later said she was trying to find out from her son if his friend had the pills “and might be supplying them to her son.”
While stating she admitted to being addicted to fentanyl, the affidavit said Barrett also said she had been clean for more than three months since entering a drug treatment program and that “she denied condoning or participating in her son’s drug abuse.”
The affidavit said Barrett has a long history of convictions for drug-related offenses, theft from a vulnerable adult and shoplifting.
“The defendant has a history of drug abuse and currently has her remaining children removed from her care,” the arrest affidavit also stated.
Barrett was freed from jail last week and the dead teen’s father in a television interview lamented his son’s death and said he did not understand why she was not formally charged by the County Attorney.
“He died of an overdose of fentanyl, which she said I will give you pills. I don’t know what else needs to happen,” said Gilbert resident Charles Schulman in an interview with Channel 3 News. Schulman said he shared custody of Sean.
“She was supposed to be the one person who was supposed to be protecting him and instead she was using him to get her drugs,” Schulman told the TV station.
“He was my little buddy. We loved to do everything together,” Schulman told Channel 3. “I feel like he was let down so many times while he was alive and now it’s just happening again. I feel like nobody cares.”
