Jersey Shore mom sentenced for giving infant fatal methadone dose

A Jersey Shore mother who prosecutors say gave her 7-month-old daughter methadone has been sentenced to prison. 

Atlantic County prosecutors say 33-year-old Lisa Scalia must serve nearly seven years of an eight year term imposed Monday before she becomes eligible for parole.

The Ventnor woman had pleaded guilty last December to aggravated manslaughter as part of a plea deal.

The child had been found unconscious at her mother’s Monmouth Avenue home in Ventnor in January 2016 and died five days later at a hospital.

Scalia had rolled onto the child while she was high on drugs, but it was determined the baby’s cause of death was due to methadone.

She “recklessly caused the [child’s] death under circumstances manifesting extreme indifference to human life, specifically by administrating methadone,” a release from the Atlantic County Prosecutor’s Office said at the time of her guilty plea late last year. 

Methadone is a medication that reduces withdrawal symptoms in people addicted to heroin and other opioids without generating a high.  

Authorities have said Scalia had 34 bags of heroin and 10 oxycodone pills.

She was initially charged in January 2016 with with endangering the welfare of a child and four counts of possession of controlled dangerous substances before the aggravated manslaughter charge was filed in late September.

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The Associated Press contributed to this report.