Mother Charged In Death Of 2-Year-Old Tullytown Boy

Authorities have charged the mother of 2-year-old Mazikeen Curtis with his death.

Jennifer Clarey, 42, of Tullytown, was arraigned Tuesday afternoon with criminal homicide. She was denied bail by a district judge and awaits a preliminary hearing scheduled for September 25.

“This goes beyond a horrible tragedy. This was clearly a murderous act,” Bucks County District Attorney Matt Weintraub told reporters at an afternoon press conference in Tullytown.

Mazikeen’s lifeless body was discovered shortly after 10 p.m. on Saturday, August 25 inside the home at 501 Lovett Avenue in Tullytown after a call to Bucks County Children and Youth Services (CYS) that Clarey was uncooperative and intoxicated, according to court papers.

While performing a well-being check following the report about Clarey, CYS contacted Tullytown police who obtained a key to the residence and encountered the 42-year-old lying on a blood-covered sheet next to her lifeless son, who appeared to be dead for some time, authorities said.

Clarey, who has older children that did not live with her, had significant self-inflicted lacerations to both of her wrists and was transported by a rescue squad to Lower Bucks Hospital in Bristol Township where she survived after receiving numerous stitches.

A search of Clarey’s residence revealed a bloody knife and utility razor blades, a locked strongbox with a prescription bottle for hydrocodone-acetamin, which had been filled on August 18 for 120 pills and was empty with the cap secured, and an empty 4 fluid oz bottle of children’s Benadryl with the cap secured in the kitchen trash.

According to the autopsy results, Mazikeen displayed no obvious signs of trauma when his body was discovered, but an autopsy did reveal his brain was “swollen and dusky, a sign consistent with an overdose.

During the autopsy, postmortem cardiac blood samples were taken and sent to the lab for toxicological analysis. The lab report indicated that Mazikeen’s blood contained fatally toxic levels of hydrocodone, it’s metabolite hydromorphone, and diphenhydramine, the common ingredient in Benadryl. The drugs found in the boy’s blood were identical to empty containers removed from Clarey’s residence, police said.

A few days after the lab report was finalized, a drug chemistry final report was issued for Mazikeen’s sippy cup recovered in a search of the residence. The contents of that sippy cup tested positive for hydrocodone, often sold under the brand name Vicodin, police said.

Police consulted with all of the young boy’s known medical providers and determined he had never been prescribed hydrocodone. Weintraub called the probe into why the boy had the drugs in his system “exhaustive” and said it was determined there was no reason a child would have hydrocodone in their system.

Authorities showed reporters a photo of the medication bottle that held the hydrocodone suspected in the killing.

“No 2-year-old could open this up. I couldn’t open it up with brute force,” Weintraub said while demonstrating a prescription container with a child-safe cap. Mazikeen’s did not do this; Jennifer Clarey did this.”

No motive has been released in the death, but Weintraub said Clarey “will be made to answer for this murder.”

“This was certainly a killing with malice,” he stated.

“Plain and simple: this was a murder and the weapon was the painkillers that came from this bottle.”

Editor’s Note: All individuals arrested or charged with a crime are presumed innocent until proven guilty. The story was compiled using information from police and public court documents.