Two Madison, Indiana parents were arrested this week after their 3-month-old son died in July from ingesting methamphetamine.
Deven Frisque, 32, and Tara Savage, 28, were charged with neglect of a dependent two months after the death of their infant son, Eben Frisque.
Police began investigating after a call July 15 about an unresponsive child. Officers arrived at the couple’s apartment to find the infant was stiff, discolored and cool to the touch, according to the probable cause affidavit. He was pronounced dead at the scene.
A later autopsy found that Eben tested positive for meth.
Savage, Eben’s mother, told police she woke up after a neighbor knocked on the door. Light from outside leaked into the apartment when she answered the door, and that’s when she noticed that the baby’s face was blue.
Frisque told police he didn’t even have time to get a cigarette before Savage began screaming for someone to call 911.
According to the affidavit, Frisque and Savage had been using drugs while caring for Eben and another child, Savage’s six-year-old daughter. Frisque admitted to police that he snorted meth in the apartment the night before the infant’s death. Savage, who admitted to using meth in the days leading up to the death, didn’t join that night because she had discovered she was pregnant.
Frisque also told police he took Suboxone the night before. Suboxone, a drug used to treat opioid addiction that can itself become addictive, caused him to fall into a deep sleep. He told police that he only took a partial dose with the intent to still take care of the baby.
Eben was sleeping on the sectional couch with his parents when he died, like he had been for the previous three nights. According to court records, Frisque told police that Eben peed in his bassinet three days earlier and it had yet to be cleaned.
While Savage was screaming, her daughter came downstairs and told her she had seen that the infant was blue earlier, while Frisque and Savage were asleep.
Savage's daughter said in an interview with a child advocate that she came downstairs two times when it was daylight and saw that Eben, who she called “bubby,” had a discolored face but she didn’t tell anyone. She also said Savage was not nice to Eben and was always on the phone talking about how she didn’t want to take care of the infant.
In August, police interviewed the neighbor who knocked on the door, Stanley Renecker.
Renecker told police he watched Frisque snort meth the night before the death but didn’t see Savage do the same. But he had seen her and Frisque using meth the night before that.
According to the affidavit, Renecker told police that Frisque said he was glad police didn’t search him the day of Eben’s death. He had a pipe used to smoke meth in his boot while being interviewed.
Frisque is currently in police custody and appeared in Jefferson County Court on Friday at an initial hearing. Savage is in custody in Kentucky, awaiting extradition back to Indiana.
