A suburban Chicago couple was charged with first degree murder in the death last November of their 2-year-old daughter from a drug overdose.
Court documents say that Edward Weiher, 49, and Alexa Balen, 28, bought Narcan via Uber and didn’t call 911 for nearly 4 hours after their toddler daughter began experiencing the overdose on November 6, 2024, WGN reported.
Police in Will County were called to the home in Homer Glen just after 11:30 p.m. for a report of an unresponsive child and a possible carbon monoxide leak. They arrived to find Weiher attempting CPR on Trinity Balen-Weiher, with Balen and her 6-year-old daughter inside the home.
The little girl was taken to a hospital, where she died.
Weiher told police that his handheld carbon monoxide meter had registered a reading 6,000 parts per million — a level that would render residents unconscious and kill them within about 20 minutes, WGN reported. Weiher said he shut off the home’s boiler and opened the windows, claiming that the toddler had apparently been the only resident of the home to suffer any ill effects.
A utility company investigator found.a small leak in the basement, but it was nowhere near the levels that Weiher reported.
Police noted the house was filled with garbage, food, urine, and feces, and that they found a white substance suspected to be cocaine or heroin on countertops, tables, and a mattress where the family slept in easy reach of both children. They also found pieces of burnt foil believed to be used with heroin.
After initially sticking to the carbon monoxide story, Balen admitted to police that she and Weiher did heroin regularly. She said that she wanted to call 911 after the couple incorrectly administered a Narcan dose to the little girl, but Weiher refused and instead called Uber to pick up more Narcan, which can reverse the effects of an opioid overdose. But it didn’t work, and the little girl stopped breathing.
Weiher eventually told the same story as Balen.
Police recovered heroin and Xanax from the home. Balen’s 6-year-old daughter was taken into custody by the Department of Children and Family Services, and she tested positive for fentanyl and cocaine.
Weiher and Balen were initially charged with child endangerment resulting in death, child endangerment, and possession of a controlled substance.
After learning that the couple didn’t call 911 for 3 hours and 41 minutes and searched “how to stop an od” before calling, the charges were upgraded to murder this week. A pathologist concluded that Trinity “would have survived” if they’d called 911 when she first began showing signs of an overdose.
The couple was granted pretrial release and is due back in court on June 27.
